Red Cobra
by Billybobjoe47s
Summary: Last time the UNSC discovered a mysterious alien artifact, the Halos came within seconds of activating. Every problem the UNSC has had in the last 50 years has been because of aliens and their blasted artifacts. So when a newly-surveyed system holds a mysterious artifact, there is great cause for worry. Operation RED COBRA is intended to remedy that worry- by any means necessary.
1. Red Cobra

Throughout Citadel space, there are dozens of unactivated relays. The activation of one was a rare occurrence, happening only once or twice a century, and for good reason—the Rachni were once on the other side of an unactivated Mass Relay. Another famous example was the Omega-4 Relay—through which no one had ever returned.

Then, too, there was Relay 314.

It had been activated several years ago, in hopes of finding a garden world, and those hopes were rewarded—there was indeed a pristine planet, ready for colonizing, on the other side.

But things quickly went awry. The first colonizers set up camp, began to construct the capital city—and promptly disappeared without a trace between patrols, several months in. There were no distress signals, no signs of weapons fire, and no survivors. Not a clue.

Another colony was sent, with a large military component, in hopes of fending off whatever had destroyed the small, lightly-defended first attempt. The result was the same. Even with a cruiser hovering in orbit, ready to provide assistance at the slightest hint of trouble, nothing was detected. The sun went down on a prosperous colony, just beginning to sink its roots into the soil.

The sun rose on a ghost town.

Any further attempts were promptly abandoned, and a permanent fleet was put in orbit to ensure that no ships ever rose from its surface—keeping the threat, as it were, from ever entering orbit.

Then, of course, there were the ghost transports. Over the space of a month, the Mass Relay was activated 7 times. Of those 7, 2 were officially recognized. 1 was a pirate, looking for a new hidey-hole. The other 4 had no ship on either end initiating the relay, but they went through all the motions of activation.

Some theorized that it was the Relays, perhaps calibrating after something had slightly altered the path of one of the pair. Most, however, just saw it as ghosts—perhaps the same ghosts that had obliterated two colonies without a trace—finally going to their resting place.

On a possibly related note, many systems reported rumors of 'ghost ships' which blinked into view on scanners for a second, maybe two, and then disappeared without a trace. Again, the accepted explanation was sensor ghosts caused by malfunctioning equipment.

Unfortunately, none of the explanations for either phenomenon was right, and the Citadel was about to encounter something new—something that hid in the shadows and the blackness, never showing its face or drawing attention.

_ June 21, 2560_

Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood, head of the United Nations Space Command and, therefore, the second-most powerful person in human space (after the President of the UEG), frowned again as he went over the latest reports from Operation Red Cobra. The project was only in its infancy, the object which allowed for its creation only found a year ago, but its scope was grand and its impact big. Dangerously big; while its reports offered a gold mine for information and technology developments, the ramifications of exactly where those developments were coming from were extremely worrisome.

At least it wasn't illegal on top of all of his other concerns, but it was a fleeting consolation. If anything from this leaked to anyone, the consequences would be disastrous. Easily several times worse then the SPARTAN debacle and arguably as bad as the Kilo-Five incident.

Luckily, the _UNSC Ghost in the Code_ had finished its stellar mapping and quasar locking (and it had taken quite some time, given with the complete lack of stellar references other than quasars), so the use of Artifact 1-0001 was no longer needed, which made for one less ulcer eating at him.

ONI, despite the recent purges, and Kilo-Five and the subsequent rebuttal of their recent modus operandi, was still a little too independent for his liking. He'd gotten the report on the project the day of its creation, at least (or gotten it at all), which was a step beyond the old ways, but he'd gotten the report proposing its creation—after the first prowler had already been sent through.

With that, it had been too late to cancel it, and he'd allowed it, reluctantly. With the mapping done, however, the artifacts were no longer needed, eliminating the most dangerous moments of compromisation. Now, ships could simply travel directly there.

He signed the report at the bottom, placed his thumb on the scanner, and enunciated, "Terrence Hood." The datapad beeped, accepting his credentials.

And now, with the just-approved batch of Stellar Cartography AI's, shepherded by a new 7th-gen Smart AI, as their survey of the nearby stars began and distances determined, none of the other artifacts would be needed either.

He scrolled to the next report, also a request from Red Cobra. This request, however, was much bigger. And stranger.

"Why on Earth would they want a Phoenix-class?" Surely there was a better option than one of the obsolete former colony ships, converted to planetary assault vessels, which were only still in service because the UNSC was still a largely gutted force! Even then, they were relegated to Insurrectionist suppressal and colony defense, as they were far too old and underpowered even by Covenant-war standards to refit to newer standards. Plans called for them all to be scrapped in the next five years.

He scrolled to their justifications, interested in why ONI would request such an eclectic ship. ONI dealt in the cutting-edge, not the obsolescent. As he did so, he reached back for his mug of early-morning coffee. He'd probably need it—there were a dozen more reports that couldn't wait, and at least a hundred more which he needed to read and sign today. Such were the woes of the supreme administrator in the navy.

The next paragraph made him regret that decision as he promptly spewed out his drink.

"They want to do WHAT?"


	2. Crimson Ostrich

Carefully, he set his cup down and paged for an aide to come mop the mess up. Then, he returned to the datapad, scrutinizing each word with his full faculties. With stellar cartography now a possibility, ONI was certainly not thinking small.

They wanted a Phoenix-class for its original purpose—colonization, not invasion. Initial surveys of the few systems near the Artifacts indicated that the race—or races, for the jury was still out after so short a time—which used the Artifacts relied on them heavily. They obviously used some other sort of FTL, but current estimates showed it to be slower—possibly significantly slower—than current-gen S-F drives. Nearby systems not connected to the Artifact web were colonized, but only in systems with what appeared to be pre-existing terrestrial worlds or containing extremely valuable resources. Barren systems had no presence at all, and indeed seemed to be ignored entirely.

ONI's plan was based on this premise, that the xenos lacked good terraforming technology and were thus restricted to worlds that were already life-supporting or close to it. They proposed that a resource-rich system, with a world amenable to terraforming but lacking a native garden world, be found and that the Phoenix-class be dispatched to terraform and colonize it, accompanied by a suitable fleet to ensure security. Then, a forward base for operations within Artifact space would be established, covertly out-of-sight. The report was extremely well-written, extolling the virtues of using old, obsolescent ship classes for the purpose and conserving resources.

But this was far too soon. Far, far too soon. For heaven's sakes, Red Cobra had only begun three months ago! Stellar placement had occurred yesterday. Yesterday! And already, the spooks had a report written up!? How long had they been planning this, Hood wondered. Knowing them, probably since day one.

The report concluded artfully, followed by some more specs for specialists to verify. Hood had once been a specialist in his day, though, and while he was a bit behind, the shorthand language they typed in was still the same.

He let out a sigh of relief, seeing the proposed timeline. Although the Phoenix was to be refitted and equipped immediately, and a security fleet was to be formed in a month, the most optimistic timeline called for earliest deployal in a year, with worst-case outlines at five years. So, they wouldn't be rushing into this one.

It also called for a doubling of the density of the stealth shaped-warhead charges surrounding the mass relay in the Shanxi system, as well as a permanent stationing of two prowlers and the _UNSC Point of No Return_—another artful use of resources, as the blasted thing was certainly not going back to ONI. Their upper echelons would now stay firmly on Earth, right where he could see them. As of now, it was the only stealthed ship manned not by ONI personnel, but UNSC naval crewmen.

The whole thing still felt too hasty for him, but the built-in delays in the operation schedule were greatly reassuring. Still, if it was up to him alone, he would've deferred the proposal another six months before even considering it. Unfortunately, something this big went to the Security Council, not him alone, and he was sure that the ONI head would vote for it.

And the General, too, sheep that he was. Two out of six, already.

All in all, if it came down to his vote, he conceded that he wouldn't be averse to the proposal. There were quite a few benefits to the proposal, after all, and even if the risky nature in regards to the new xenos turned his stomach, it would also be secure from any threats in this neck of the woods.

He stood with a sigh as his aged bones creaked in protest. It would do no good to put the vote off; it could wreck his schedule now, or it could wreck it later, and Hood had never been a procrastinator.

He hit the comms button on his desk, and his personal AI, Ares, popped into holographic being, his spear and armored form glowing olive-green. "I take it this has to do with the Hideaway proposal?" he queried.

"Yes," Hood nodded. "Please call for a meeting of the Security Council, ASAP, for a vote on it."

"Done," Ares replied. "Also, Lord Hood, the proposal has been given the codename Crimson Ostrich."

Hood made a face. "That's a terrible codename. Can't it be changed?"

"Talk about it at the meeting, sir," Ares said. "Large-scale operation alteration isn't allowed by AI's."

"Even for the name?" Hood pleaded, as he put on his jacket.

"Even for the name, sir."

"Remind me to discuss that, too," the admiral said as he opened his door. "I need to be able to tell you to change codewords to something that's not god-awful whenever I feel like it. There's a new ONI, and it needs a new way of naming operations besides 'what's the strangest, wordiest, and least appealing way to name important things.'" He walked down the hall, nodding to his guards as they fell in alongside him.

He stepped into the elevator at the hall, pressed his thumb into the scanner, and stated once more, "Terrence Hood." There were only three buttons on the elevator's panel: one led to the ground floor, where he entered and exited every day. Another led to this floor, securely located six floors below the roof (it wasn't on the top floor because it was all too easy to grapple on top of buildings or to land a small craft on the roof, and the six floors between his floor and the roof, which just happened to be an ODST urban warfare training ground which was always occupied with soldiers using live ammunition, provided that extra cushion).

Today, he pressed the third. "Down we go," he muttered.

The Bunker, as the High-Security VIP Glassing Shelter in the basement of the tower was known, was a stark concrete room, far below the surface. Its only entrance was a ten-foot Titanium-A door, guarded by no less then a full platoon of ODST's and 3 AI's. Inside was a full strategic setup, intended for Lord Hood or his successors to coordinate the defense of Earth, while remaining hidden and secure from enemy forces.

The holoprojector sputtered to life as he entered, and Ares appeared in its glow. "Three are already linked in, sir," he reported. "ETA on the other two is less than 5."

"Good, good," Hood approved, sitting down into his armchair, the only comfort allowed in the room. "Link me in." Idly, he pricked his finger and placed it on the scanner.

"DNA confirmed, sir. Linking you now."

The six-seated table was suddenly filled with three other holographic forms. Within a few seconds, a fourth fizzled in.

"Good morning," Hood said, nodding to the others. "We'll begin as soon as the President logs in."

As if summoned, the President of the UEG logged in that very moment. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!" he beamed. "Let's get this over with quickly, shall we?"

The others nodded, as did Hood. None of them liked screwing up their schedule for Security Council meetings, but it was necessary.

He looked at the five other people which wielded the most power out of any beings in the galaxy, other than the Arbiter of Sangheilos. There was the commanding officer of all UNSC colonial ground forces and the Army, General Abraham Peyton. Next was the head logistics man and economic advisor, Doctor Adam Vey. Thirdly, there was the head of ONI, the newly-instated Admiral Ina Janson, replacement for the treasonous Parangosky and her protégé Osman.

Then there was him. Together, they were the military side of the Security Council. The fifth member was the head diplomat for the UEG, Doctor Elise Phelps, in charge of all contact with the former Covenant races. Finally, there was the nominal head of the council, the President of the UEG, Nick Sanchez. They made up the civilian oversight side of the Security Council.

Sanchez looked down at his datapad. "I'm assuming that you called this meeting because of the Crimson Ostrich proposal, Admiral Hood?"

"Yes, Mr. President." Hood cleared his throat. "Given its timeline, I thought that it should be voted on as soon as possible." He leaned back, preparing himself for the inevitable debate. "Any suggestions?"

Phelps was the first one to take the plunge. "I still insist that we should attempt to make peaceful contact before making such a potentially-provocative move," she said. "I've been getting stonewalled for three months, but this proposal is just a step too far."

Jansen immediately replied, "It's obvious already that this race takes warfare seriously, based on initial scans of ships classes. Admittedly, they are very small ships, but there are a lot of the things. If first contact doesn't go well, we could very well have another Covenant War on our hands. In that case, we need a well-established forward base for offensive operations."

The general butted in, "If we are going to make contact, we have to be in a position of power first. If we don't have some way of taking the fight to them, we'll be in a similar position to the entire Covenant War, able only to react rather than act."

Doctor Vey nodded in agreement. "Initial scans of the Artifact, before we were forced to discontinue active investigations, indicated that it works using some unknown compound with interesting properties, and it certainly appears that the systems Red Cobra has infiltrated ha the same compound in abundance. If we could find a similar system with sufficient quantities to experiment on, I'm confident that we'll be able to find some good uses for it. In addition, the proposal gives a better way to utilize aging ships and resources then melting them down for scrap. I vote for the proposal."

His two backers quickly agreed with him, and Hood leaned back. So Logistics was in on the plan too—indeed, it looked like he was spearheading the effort. Whatever this compound was, they wanted it bad. He typed a note on his pad to have Ares mark all future reports on said compound as high-priority.

Sanchez closed his eyes for a moment. "While I see where you are coming from, don't we have a full grid set up around the Artifact of SHIVA's? Surely that's enough security to cork that bottleneck and allay your fears."

"We know that the xenos use at least one other form of FTL, which doesn't appear to be slipspace," Jansen rebutted. "Until we know how fast that method is, we can't risk assuming that the Artifact is the only assault vector."

His brows furrowed in thought. "True." With a sigh, he put his face in his hands. "I'm not going to rule out diplomatic contact, pending further developments in Red Cobra, but there's too much riding on this to keep ourselves limited to one option. I'm voting for it, as well."

Hood's eyebrows rose in surprise. The President was breaking with the diplomat; a rare occurrence if there was one. His vote wouldn't even be needed; the majority decision had been made already.

"Fine," Elise said curtly, before cutting the channel without so much as a goodbye. Sanchez looked at her empty spot for a moment, and frowned. "Now that that's decided, I've got to go patch things up with Mrs. Phelps," he said, standing. "I'll see you next week." He, too, disconnected.

As the two civilians left, Hood looked to Jansen. "I'll go along with this, but I want two things."

"What?" she asked warily.

"First, I want a NOVA in the nuke field," Hood said brusquely. "If something big, something we didn't see coming, pops out of that artifact, I want to be sure we can kill it."

"Done," she replied instantly. "Second?"

"There was no mention of ground force composition in ONI's report," he said. "What force levels did you have in mind? Are there any unique assets you wanted deployed?"

"Oh, that," Vey said with a smile. "Rest assured, I've got enough leeway to send a company of S-IV's with Crimson Ostrich. I was thinking that we send X-Ray, right out of Basic, along with a few veterans to keep them in line."

"And who did you have in mind?" Hood asked. He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

"Why, who else then the best?" Vey replied, with a smile. "Don't worry, our force levels are finally high enough that we can afford to deploy some high-level assets on long-term missions."

The Fleet Admiral's face creased into a smile. "You've got a deal," he said warmly. "If they can't keep this thing afloat, nothing can." With a motion, he cut the connection and leaned back. "Ares, remind me to find some time to talk to Tom. He might not be happy to get his asset stolen next year."

"Yes, sir."

_A/N: So, I was fed up with the usual "Haloverse finds artifact, sends a very small fleet to survey it next to their new colony, and First Contact War ensues" Mass Effect-Halo xovers, and the formulaic way EACH and EVERY one unfolds, (with the exception of two or three, which are the ones I actually followed/faved) the exact same way. There's no way the UNSC would be that stupid. After the Covenant War, their only response would be overwhelming force whenever possible. And extreme caution. So I'm taking this crossover a different way. Also, there will be very little Council-bashing nor Eezo-power bashing- Both sides have significant advantages, so it will not be a curbstomp for either side, unless it's through tactical or strategic surprise. No tech-stomping here._


	3. Stalking Horse

_A/N:Wow, you guys. I'm just... blown away by the response to this. 3,000 views in 48 hours? Thanks for reading this. I was so impressed I completely ignored my other stories (I usually write on a rotating schedule between stories, so be warned it will not be updated every two days normally) to write this as a thank-you._

_Enjoy!_

_UNSC Security Council Minutes, June 29, 2560_

_ This data is classified under the National Security Act. Attempts to access, view, distribute, or otherwise edit this file from unauthorized sources will be prosecuted for treason._

_ Password: **********************_

_ Authorizing…_

_ Access Granted._

1: Now that we're back to the normal weekly schedule of meetings, what's on the docket today?

4: Analysts have come up with a small-scale series of operations that could enhance our intelligence-gathering capabilities in regards to the xenos considerably. There are three distinct parts, which I've taken the liberty to title Operations Stalking Horse, Rosetta Stone, and Hitchhiker.

The latter two are based exclusively on Stalking Horse, so I'll get down to the details of that first.

To put it simply, ladies and gentlemen, we need data from inside xeno systems. We have sensor data—loads of the stuff—but without some way to interpret it, it's so much gibberish and raw binary. We need ship stats, planetary details, star maps, essentially everything. Most important, however, is the language. I'm confident that with a sufficient amount of linguistic binary data, our AI's can get a translator running, and then we can worry about other sets of data.

To that end, Stalking Horse proposes a stealth insertion of an operative onto the surface of one of the picket ships in the Shanxi system. With the operative will be a designated EW/DT AI, who will covertly access the public mainframes onboard, transmit the data, and then begin work on any classified or encrypted data in the system.

5: How can we ensure that they aren't detected on their way in? That would be a rather large giveaway that we exist.

3: I see the benefits, but it is very risky.

4: Indeed it is, and because of that, we've built some basic precautions into the mission. First, we'll be using the new-gen active camo systems we, eh, "borrowed" from the Sangheili labs. We've got enough fabricated we can use one of the prototypes on the mission. As you know from prior briefings, while the module is shorter-lived and much bulkier then previous generations, it also cuts the telltale infrared emissions of the system by over ninety percent. Coolant systems in the specialized insertion armor we're designing will increase that time by half. This offers a significantly higher chance of avoiding detection. As well, the EW AI will be giving off calibrated emissions designed to mimic universal background emissions.

Thirdly, there will be an automatic self-destruct sequence coded into every piece of the operation. Should the operative be detected or the field breaks, the suit will self-destruct. Should a xeno transponder come too close to the surface probe for the AI or the AI is detected, it will also self-destruct after sending all results in a data burst. Insertion will be via Prowler, jumping in extrasolar and going dark beyond the gas giant's orbit. Insertion will also be unpowered to avoid emissions.

6: What's the approximate cost of this operation?

4: We're looking at no more than a few hundred thousand credits—quantities of equipment are small, and while expensive, they are all items we already have fabricated and in inventory.

2: I assume that the operative will be a volunteer?

4: *pause* Of course. Shall we vote?

VOTES TALLIED: 3 AYE, 3 NAY

Vote thrown to [7]

After 13.6 seconds of deliberation, [7] votes AYE. 7 designates EW/DT 12238420-01 "Houdini" for operation. Reason stated: Rampancy time estimated at 6 months from vote date. Efficient use of resources soon to be terminated in any case.

Operation Stalking Horse activated.

4: With that out of the way, we can move onto the following two projects. Rosetta Stone is nothing more than a classified assignment of several linguistics AI's and experts to interpret the data we receive from Stalking Horse. I assume there are no objections to that?

2: No.

1: No.

6: I have none.

No objections noted. Operation Rosetta Stone activated.

4: Now, Hitchhiker is arguably the most risky. Assuming that Stalking Horse is not terminated, there will be a secure conduit for transfer of a group EW/DT AI's into the ship systems. These AI's will lay low until the ship is rotated back to its home system for R&amp;R, upon which one AI will begin to infiltrate planetary or space-station servers. Assuming this goes as planned, the other AI's will infiltrate other public servers and begin transmitting superluminal data towards Hideaway. If one is discovered, they will immediately self-terminate without data-bursts to avoid triangulation of Hideaway's position.

3: What types of servers would infiltration be attempted on? Public servers only? Or classified and encrypted data from ostensible military and governmental sources?

4: All public servers would be transmitted before any encrypted servers are to be attempted; that way we'll be sure to get a significant fraction of public data before our assets are terminated.

2: So, our AI's will simply be logging into their version of the internet and downloading everything in sight?

4: Essentially, yes.

2: I see no objections with downloading public data. But accessing their military and governmental files is certainly an act of war should they discover it. Perhaps it would be best to avoid provocation… at least until Hideaway is well underway. To that, I propose that Hitchhiker be implemented with the modification to go after public files only.

6: Even with that restriction, we'll be spending a lot of time and resources trying to interpret even a fraction of the data we'll get, if our own networks are any indication. I think it would be wise to limit our efforts until we have a viable Rosetta product and we can separate the wheat from the chaff… or, say, the star maps from the null-grav wrestling.

1: I'm going to side with [2] here.

VOTE CALLED

Aye 4, Nay 2

Hitchhiker amended.

VOTE CALLED

Aye 6, Nay 0

Hitchhiker activated.

1: This meeting is adjourned. Until next week, ladies and gentlemen.

Operation: Stalking Horse

Progress: Stealth Prowler insertion successful. Upon questioning, [REDACTED] volunteered for the operation, given callsign BRONCO. Operative BRONCO release successful, currently on path to target. Arrival time: 4 hours.

-REDCOBRA-

_July 7, 2560 _

"Shoot," BRONCO muttered as he lost his game of virtual chess… again. He'd lasted two more moves than last time, but that only made 20 moves. BRONCO was a good chess player… but he was human.

And as an ASCII laughing face popped up on his text screen, his conqueror rejoiced in its latest victory. "Yeah, laugh it up, Houdini," he muttered sourly. "It's not like you've got an unfair advantage or anything."

An amused, slightly Italian voice chimed back, "You were the one who suggested chess, sir. It's your fair desserts."

BRONCO grumbled good-naturedly. "After four hours of drifting in the endless black, even chess with an AI sounds good," he admitted. "When I volunteered for this, I was expecting it to be less… boring."

"I'm sure we'll have all the excitement we want on the close-in approach," Houdini suggested. "Even the current calculations, after so long drifting, will be a bit off. I'll have to use the jets to course correct enough to land in the designated spot while not enough to break the camo field—which is still a prototype, and therefore uncertain as to disturbance tolerances— and spark anything's interest. Is that razor's edge exciting enough for you?" A big question mark appeared on his visor, covering up nearly his entire field of vision (not that it mattered, because right now all he could see, feet-first towards the planet and the small fleet above it, was stars).

"Don't remind me," BRONCO sighed. "Why did I volunteer for this in the first place?"

"Would you like to play another game of chess while I recalculate our angles, sir?" Houdini asked, ignoring the question and thereby truly proving his intelligence.

"I think I'm going to stick to a few games of solitaire for now," BRONCO confided. "Maybe later."

"Aye, sir."

"Beginning final corrections in sixty seconds, sir," Houdini said. "Please brace yourself and make peace with whatever deities you believe in."

"Shut up."

With a hiss, a small nozzle opened near his hip, spitting a small quantity of near-solid O2. He began to drift slowly in the corrected course, other jets bringing him upright and facing the ships, able to see them now as small specks in the distance. For a moment, the field currently keeping him invisible rippled, becoming like clear water, but then it quickly stabilized again.

They were rapidly growing, silhouetted against the planet, and within minutes he was close enough to make out details of the ships.

"Final insertion appears to be successful. Is your will all laid out, sir?"

"Stop with the wit, Houdini, or I'll disable your vocal processors."

"Three minutes until impact. Please calm your breathing, sir, you're using up too much oxygen."

They indeed looked rather predatory, smoother than UNSC ships but more angular than the Covenant's, almost a mix between the two. It had a distinctly avian feel to the ship—the overall shape was like some bird of prey, swooping down from the heavens.

It was still a rather small ship, by UNSC standards, but compared to one man and his AI, drifting through the cosmos, it was a colossus that quickly took up the entirety of his vision.

He was aiming for the junction between the 'wing' of the ship and the main body. Passive scans indicated what looked like external maintenance ports for some kind of system on the wing. His job was simply to jack Houdini into the systems, place the data storage and burst comm system somewhere out of sight and unlikely to be found, and then get out of Dodge, drifting for another few hours before a stealth Pelican would pick him up and take him to the Prowler, which would promptly turn tail and head for the outer system to jump out.

"Impact in one minute, sir," Houdini stated. "Taking control of nanofiber weave. Please bring your arms forward and cease hyperventilation."

BRONCO complied with the first, and as his arms hit a certain position, his suit locked, placing him in the ideal position to absorb the shock of his landing.

Before he knew it, the ship was there, right in front of his face, and with a terrible jerk, he hit the ship, suit unlocking. His hands and feet scrabbled for some kind of handhold, but the surface of the ship was nearly entirely sheer, besides the maintenance ports—there was nothing to grab onto, and he began to angle away from the ship as his bounce sent him back into the void.

"No, no no!" he screamed as he flailed, looking for anything to hold on. "Houdini, bring us back in, quick!"

"That brings that risk of detection to unacceptably high levels," Houdini stated calmly. "This mission is aborted."

The operative's blood ran cold. He knew what that meant. "Current vector?"

"We will not be able to be picked up before your oxygen is depleted, sir," Houdini replied apologetically. "My condolences."

_"Damn!"_ he spat. Frantically, he eyeballed the angle to the slowly receding ship. "Screw that," he raged, bringing his hand down and smacking the small gas nozzle on his leg. It broke and began to spew gases, as a blinking warning sign and a strident beep began to call out damage in his helmet. The active camo visibly flickered in his display, but it didn't break.

He shot towards the ship, pinwheeling slightly, as Houdini protested, "Sir, you're jeopardizing the mission!"

"No, I'm saving it," he gritted out, teeth clenched against the force.

This time, he smacked into the edge of the wing, hard. His breath whooshed out and he felt something in his chest cave as pain spiked through his lungs. His suit helpfully informed him he'd broken three ribs, and further movement risked puncturing a lung.

The jet's pressure kept him from skipping off the hull this time, instead pushing him along it in a spin, and finally his grasping fingers found a small crevice to halt his movement, though as he revolved around his new anchor, a painful jerk and another screen informed him he'd just dislocated a finger and broken two others.

The jet ceased, its gas reservoir depleted, and BRONCO simply lay there for a moment, clenching his teeth, as the suit began to administer first aid, stiffening his glove joints and injecting anesthetics. "Shut up, Houdini, and scratch the self-termination sequence," he said.

The AI's only reply was a picture of pursed lips and a music note rendered in ASCII. "What sequence?"

BRONCO barked a laugh. "That's right." Carefully, he crawled over the slick surface of the ship, visor polarizing even more as the sun came into view. "There's the maintenance port now," he muttered, drawing near after an agonizing minute of clambering along its surface, fingers throbbing with every handhold and chest burning with every breath.

He waited for a moment, panting (the suit, in order to provide sufficient stealth, space maneuverability, and oxygen, was quite heavy, stiff, and unwieldy; even in zero-grav, moving around in it was an ordeal), before grabbing the AI's chip with his good hand and slapped it onto the port. The specialized miniature probe in the infiltrator chip quickly connected directly to the wiring within, and Houdini exclaimed, "That's it, connection set. Get out of here, sir!"

"Copy that," BRONCO said, carefully nestling the small transmitter in the shadowed corner of the panel. Then, without further ado, he hastily aligned his suit with the animated recommended vector and pushed off. Only then did he notice a new message flashing.

Opening it, he was greeted with a large ASCII thumbs-up and an attachment labeled "Do Not Open; Give to Superior."

"What's with the ASCII?" he mumbled as he drew away, floating back into the endless void.

"Eight more hours to go… Joy."

The solitaire program reopened.

TO: HAWK

FROM: COLT

_ Stalking Horse operational success._

_ Note: Mission nearly aborted when unanticipated slickness of xeno ship surface prevented a handhold on contact. BRONCO broke protocol to gain a second chance, but it paid off. Houdini successfully delivered; data packets already incoming._

_ Recommendations: Operative showed patience, intelligence, and a willingness to break the right rules. In addition, operative sustained injuries while in the line of duty. Award one (1) Purple Heart. Promote to permanent field officer from position [REDACTED]._

MISSION LOG END

_ A/N: Already, I've had multiple reviews which insisted that the Halo side would crush the Mass Effect side with superior technology. I have this to say about that._

_ First, the date is 2560. That's barely 7 years out of having well over half of the humanity's planets, infrastructure and population destroyed in the most catastrophic war any nation has come out of still a nation. 7 years is also barely enough time to have a research-design-prototype-testing-production-deployment cycle for large warships, and the UEG was too busy rebuilding SMACs and ensuring that no one starved (because, you know, most of the agricultural outer planets are now radioactive wastelands) while trying to keep the decimated economy struggling along, and suppressing insurrections at the same time._

_ Plus, while the UEG and the Arbiter are on good (meaning neither cold nor hot war, though relations could be called "barely tolerable") terms, there are plenty of splinter factions of the Covenant with the firepower and the will to be a danger to human planets. More on specific factions, species, and relations later._

_ All of this means that while the UNSC may (MAY) have better cutting-edge tech, it's only around in small numbers, as nearly the entire previous generation of ships was destroyed at Reach and Earth and they're only now barely beginning to put new-gen ships out of the factories. Which means, at the moment, they're using clunker ships (all they have) to defend their worlds and keeping the new-gens close to their chest (Read: sitting around Earth to protect it)._

_ More on tech balances of both sides next chappie._


	4. Surgical Insertion

"Off we go, into the black again," Admiral Pyetrson muttered. "Just like old times, eh?" The retrofitted holoprojector sparked to life, and as her holographic form materialized, a cool soprano replied, "That may be the case for you, Admiral, but this is a first for me. Unless you count simulations, of course."

A tall, confident woman stood on the podium, her blue form contrasted by the navy-blue, almost black uniform she sported, covered in a chestful of medals. None of those medals were real, and the uniform did not belong to any navy which had ever sailed, but it was recreated in loving detail, down to the piping on the cuffs. "Course set to the rendezvous, sir. ETA 1 hours. Also, the Governor is waiting outside for you."

"Thank you, Honor," the old Admiral said as he levered himself to his feet, but then he thought better of it and returned to his chair. "On second thought, could you just let him in? I'm getting too old to go walking around a lot."

"You're barely seventy, Admiral," Honor chided, even as she allowed the bridge doors to slide open and the planetary governor to enter. "You've got a good decade of running around yet."

"Come to relive your glory days, Governor?" he asked, not moving from his gazel over the tactical projector. "Remembering your first stint as a captain?"

"A little bit, yes," came the response, a voice heavy with age and tired in its emotion. "I actually began my career on this very ship as a brand-new lieutenant, you know—back when it was newly converted, in 2523. These halls hold… a lot of memories for me."

"I was the 2nd officer for this ship, a few years after you left," the Admiral said, fondly patting the chair. "This chair is still the same indolent cushioned delight it was thirty years ago."

"Sir," Honor said, a faint tone of embarrassment tinging her voice, "That's… actually not the same chair. It's a duplicate made to the same specifications. The original chair was replaced five years ago."

"It was?" the admiral echoed, crestfallen. "That's too bad."

"I was hoping to talk to the man who'll be in charge of keeping my people safe up above, as well as the AI who's really running the show."

Pyetrson chuckled. "Isn't she? I've only been working with Honor since I was assigned to the Angel, a few months ago, but we get along well."

Honor's mouth creased slightly at one corner. "That's because you readily acknowledge my superior tactical acumen."

"I still think I could beat you if you intentionally slowed down to a human-level speed, but I thank my ancestors that you are so fast—I'll take speed over my aging smarts any day, especially since," he rapped his whitening temples, "I'm starting to forget what I ate yesterday."

"I doubt that," Honor assured him. "Pleased to meet you, Governor. I'm UNSC AI FC-001532, callsign Honor. I'll be coordinating the Angel of Fire and, for the time being, all UNSC elements defending the Hideaway system."

"I can't say I've ever heard of a Harrington, real or mythical," the governor remarked. "Where'd you decide on that name?"

"Several hours after activation, I was parsing ancient literature as a matter of course, when I found a little gem from over 500 years ago. I decided to use an admiral from that novel." She smirked more fully now. "I also translated it into modern code and, to practice my intrusion/counter-intrusion software, put it at #1 on the Earthnet Top 10 Novels of All Time for a day.

"It certainly seems that, as I am the senior AI within Red Cobra, they decided to run with the theme for my subordinates. I'm quite flattered."

At the admiral's inquisitive look, she hummed, "Oh, you haven't met any of the other AI's yet, have you, Admiral?"

"No, not yet," he admitted. "The colonial AI was just transferred yesterday, and it's under the governor's jurisdiction."

As if on cue, a man in suit and tie sprang into being besides Honor. "There's my line!" he said cheerfully in a deep, western American accent. "Grayson, at your service. I'll be coordinating terraforming efforts and colonial data." He gave a slight bow.

"Admiral, I see you and Governor del Rio have gotten off on good terms. I'll admit I was hoping for that conclusion…"

The door finally opened, and a nondescript secretary, undoubtedly also a high-level agent, announced, "You're up."

Thankfully, BRONCO stood, cracking his neck. He'd been sitting here for half an hour in silence, waiting for his briefing and assignment. He followed the secretary through the door, and through a multitude of various scanners and identity verifiers.

After the security gauntlet was out of the way, he found himself in a middling-size space, with several rooms leading off of it and more hallways branching out.

This was the ONI section of the Angel of Fire, and it took up half a deck by itself. Of course, most of that was SigInt and R&amp;D, but there were several rooms dedicated to the more… personal side of affairs.

A man of average height stood to meet him, smiling broadly. In every way, he was utterly forgettable—except for the conspicuous metal hand that gleamed out of one sleeve. "Ah, BRONCO. Good to meet you. I'm SURGEON; I'll be your direct superior for this mission."

BRONCO tore his eyes away from the prosthetic instantly and met SURGEON's gaze as he offered a firm handshake. Nonetheless, the experience agent wasn't fooled, and he smiled wryly. "I suppose you're wondering why I have something so unusual when we're in the business of being usual, no?"

BRONCO said nothing, but SURGEON continued, "I like how observant you are. Don't worry about here—in my operation, I don't keep anything a secret that doesn't need to be. Helps things run smoother."

He rolled up his sleeve, revealing that the prosthetic went to just below the elbow. "I was doing a covert extraction on Sigma Octanus IV when I caught a piece of shrapnel from an ODST demo op—of course, they hadn't been informed about my presence, and I knew nothing about their assignment to destroy the compound I was attempting to infiltrate. The right hand not knowing what the left was doing, to its greatest extent.

"They set the charges off early, when I was still on my way out, and it wrecked my infiltration armor when shrapnel speared right through my forearm. I couldn't get out, and there were Elites swarming all over the place within minutes, so I had to hide underneath the rubble for three days. By that point, it was too late to get a cloned limb, so it was this—or remain armless."

He ushered BRONCO towards another door. "Needless to say, I chose the prosthetic, but that was the end of my field assignments."

The door was opened after a prick of blood confirmed their identities, and, under the careful scrutiny of countless cameras, both visible and hidden, SURGEON sat down at his desk, a magnificent mahogany thing. "This here's my only splurge," he said, patting it. "Now, I'm sure you're itching for your briefing, so I'll get to the point. It's danced around at the higher levels, but at some point, there will be a need for more than SigInt or AI infiltration. We'll need someone on the ground, physically snooping around. That's where you come in. Your stealth skills tested high, and you're low-ranking enough no one will notice if you go off-grid.

"You'll be paired with not one, but two AI's, specialized for separate tasks. Boys, come say hello." He tapped a button on his desk, and two forms sprang into being.

"Greetings," one, a tall, sallow man said coolly. "I am Victor, and I am your intelligence/EW specialist."

The second was Victor's polar opposite—short, stocky, and dark-skinned. "I'm Anton," he said gruffly. "Combat, tactics, and infiltration specialist. Think of Victor as Plan A and me as Plan FUBAR."

"My partner is essentially correct," Victor stated. "I am to assist in the covert aspects of the operation, while Anton's job is to keep you alive and secure. I look forwards to working with you, sir." Abruptly, he disappeared.

"I as well," Anton grinned and flickered out.

"Sorry about that, they're particularly tactless—comes with the specialization, I'd guess. In any case, they will be who you are working with. I trust you've read the packets on xeno culture and races, so I'll get to the point. The race known as Batarians have some traces we found in their datanet. The actual files are physically separate from the network, so we've only caught fragments of it in discussions and inter-office memos, but what pieces we have caught concern us greatly."

There was a knock on the door, interrupting his briefing. "Come in," he called, leaning back in his chair. The door opened, and in walked a SPARTAN.

Towering over both of them, the olive-green armor assessed the room without breaking step and gently placed a data drive on the desk. "Today's weapons simulations and my data, sir," he said in a instantly recognizable gravelly tone.

"Thank you," SURGEON said with a smile. "I'm sure you're busy with the weapons mods and the sims, so I won't take any of your time. Dismissed."

"Sir," he said, and promptly turned and left the office, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

There was a pause as BRONCO found his voice. "Was that—"

"Yes," SURGEON replied. "He's in charge of the IV's we've got onboard, as well as some weapon mods to remedy some problems we've found with some… recently implemented designs. I'm sure you realize the importance of secrecy on this."

"Of course, sir," BRONCO said, throwing a salute. "Just out of curiosity, how many IV's do we have onboard?"

"We've got the entirety of X-Ray," SURGEON replied. "Because they're new, they gave us the whole package—the full 100 onboard plus a few more for C&amp;C."

BRONCO sucked in a breath. "That's a lot of IV's."

"They'll be experimenting with new weapons tech while they're here, in addition to their usual jobs; it's the only way we got the whole company." SURGEON waved a hand. "But that's not relevant to your mission, seeing as how the one thing IV's could use some work with is subtlety and it's what you'll need in spades.

"En route to Hideaway, you'll be dropped off via SOEIV(LR), at Shanxi. There, you'll make a stealth transit through the Artifact and hitch a ride with some of the cargo traffic in the next system down. You'll be hopping ships to get to your destination—here." A planet came to life above the desk.

"This is the planet you'll be inserted onto, codename 'Chasm.' It's inhabited by the race known as Batarians. You'll be getting one of the new SPI armor models; I trust you read up on their specs?"

At BRONCO's positive indication, he nodded in approval. "Initiative too—glad I picked you. You'll be briefed more once you arrive. We have four weeks until your dropoff point, and I want you to familiarize yourself with your equipment completely beforehand. Today, get all your equipment from the armory and start using it. Dismissed."

SURGEON let out a breath and stared at the ceiling for a few moments. Unconsciously, he picked up the data drive and played with it idly. After allowing sufficient time for BRONCO to be out of hearing, he stood and exited his office. Leaning on the wall outside, he gave a thumbs-up. Silently, his security shimmered into visibility.

"What do you think of the kid, Chief?" SURGEON asked, still moving the drive between fingers and hands randomly.

"He's young. Inexperienced," the Spartan said, but after a short pause, he continued, "but he reacted well to my entry. His logs show he's good at improvisation and adaptation. If he manages to survive the first few missions, he'll be a valuable asset."

"Hm." SURGEON nodded absently. "I thought so, as well. I was thinking… if he makes it through this mission successfully… of activating Hidden Strength."

"Strength? Is he compatible?"

"He's not perfect, but there's a close enough match that most of the procedures can be shoehorned in. Frankly, none of the other agents I considered bringing in were even marginally competent comparatively, and the competent ones aren't a match. He's the best compromise I could find."

"I have no objections."

There was a few moments of companionable silence. The agent's gaze slipped down to the drive he was still playing with. "You know… the indexing isn't going to solve anything, right?" He received no reply, and he licked his lips. "We've worked together for years, and you've been pursuing this project for as long as I've known you. Perhaps it's time to let go, Chief… to move on."

"Sir, with respect, that's not going to happen."

"I know." SURGEON sighed. "Just… know that it's impossible. Trust me—we tried." He chuckled bitterly. "We put everything on it. The data's just too fragmented and corrupted to make a difference."

"That's why I'm compiling it manually, sir," the Spartan replied. "I can rewrite a large percentage of it myself."

"But you can't rewrite all of it." He stowed the drive in his pocket. "I won't mention it. You're free to keep working on it in your off-duty time, but, Chief…" He paused as he tried to find the words. "…You know she's not coming back, right?"

The Spartan's voice was even more gravelly than normal. "I know." He saluted sharply. "If you'll excuse me, sir."

"Dismissed." SURGEON watched the departing armor until it turned the corner and disappeared. Then he sighed and cast a mournful glance at the drive. "…Back to work."

-REDCOBRA-

_August 4, 2561 _

"Launch in 3… 2… 1… Launch."

The SOEIV(LR) was spat out of the launch tube with brutal force, graying out BRONCO's vision. There was another brutal jolt as the pod left the safety of the Angel's launching rails and was thrown into the brutal maelstrom of multi-dimensional space and radiation that was slipspace, and a third jolt nearly knocked him out as the pod was spat out of slipspace like a watermelon seed, spinning into the normality of the great void.

Thrusters flared briefly, stopping the spin and orienting it feet-first towards its destination.

A final farewell databurst was sent, confirming that the pod was in good condition and the mission was underway, and then BRONCO hit radio silence, no contact to be made until landfall on Chasm. He was going to be the human furthest from any other human being, possibly in all of history, alone in the cosmos.

Or, that was, alone except for the two people constantly following him around.

"Three hours until intercept with the Artifact, sir," Anton reported. "You're free to unstrap and stretch if you'd like, but you'll need to strap back in before transit—Reports say that it's a bit rough even with intertial comps, and the ones on this pod are hardly up to ship-standard."

"Current ship vectors indicate we are below detection threshold for xeno sensors and beyond their effective range, and will be for the entire system transit," Victor coolly added. "A freighter should be arriving at the artifact within an hour of our transit for realignment and further transit."

"Please don't forget to continue eating batarian-style food rather than the emergency field rations," Anton continued. "Your acclimatization process is not quite complete for the slightly different levels of basic and heavy-metal traces. Also, it probably still tastes better than the rations, even after you consider the differing vitamins and the bitter taste."

BRONCO suppressed a sigh. He was going to be stuck with these two for months, and already he was finding their close proximity to be a nuisance. Already, the solitaire program looked promising.

He'd had plenty of time to become an expert at the thing last op, anyway. After this mission, he'd probably be the world solitaire champion—at least as far as humans went, anyway. AI's could do better than him, even in a game based largely on chance.

At least they deigned to use their voices rather than that annoying ASCII Houdini had been so fond of using. Houdini had been a good friend and coworker, but that had always grated on BRONCO's nerves.

He sobered for a moment, remembering the message a higher-up had passed down to him out of courtesy, slightly illegal but much appreciated. "AI Houdini reported a greater than 1% data corruption rate expanding exponentially, and declared rampancy imminent. After replacement assets fully in place, AI Houdini self-terminated without discovery." That was all it said, but the thought was what counted, letting him know of his friend's death.

These two, however, seemed just as quirky, and they were only a few months old. He shuddered as he thought of the quirks they'd soon begin picking up as they matured and grew ever closer to rampancy.

Then, he realized he'd be paired up with them for the extent of their operational lives unless something drastic changed. Despite all his self-control and all his training, he couldn't keep his sigh from escaping this time.

_ 4 Weeks, 3 Days Earlier_

_ BEGIN LOG_

_ 1: Now, why've you called an emergency meeting, [4]? We don't have time to do one of these every week—_

_ 4: We've got a problem. We've got a big problem._

_ PAUSE LOG_

_A/N: First, please don't kill me for bringing del Rio back. He's a terrible battlefield commander, but all lore says he's an excellent logistical one, so he gets stuck with the paperwork job. _

_Second, these discussions of range and maneuverability aren't going to matter much except in a fixed battle around an unmoving installation. Know why? Because both sides have quick-starting, accurate, tactical-level FTL travel, that the other side can't reliably detect. Which means that it won't look like a gun duel from three hundred yards or even one from five feet. No, this is going to be a battle of maneuver and guessing where your opponent is better than they can guess where you'll be. Both sides will be constantly jumping in and out of FTL in three dimensions, going through and around and all over the place trying to avoid fire and get to someplace to hit the other side before they inevitably jump._

_And all fighting is going to be effectively at knife range, because why fire from far away when you can jump in and hit them from point-blank range? Again, fights are going to be brutal._


	5. Landfall

_August 25, 2561_

Admiral Pyetrsyn gazed down at the unappealing ball of grey in his display. "That's Refuge?"

"It is, sir," Grayson affirmed. "While it may not look like much now, it requires only a tweaking of the ambient oxygen levels and removal of some of the free-floating particles in the air, giving it that grey look. Nitrogen levels are acceptable, temperature ranges are suitable, if a bit cold, and the presence of toxins and radioactivity are within human tolerances over more than three-quarters of the main continent. Your colonists will be getting radiation shots every few years for about half a century, but it shouldn't negatively impact lifespans if the correction schedule is kept."

Governor del Rio nodded from his custom-installed seat, several feet behind and to the right of the admiral's. "What's the timeframe until we can start moving colonists to the surface?"

"With breath masks, technically they could go now, as the air pressure is close to Earth standards. However, the particulate levels will clog filters in a manner of hours until I get some of that cleared up. I'd estimate about a week until it'll be economical, and then immediate construction of the prefabs can begin. Full adjustments to the oxygen level will be complete in three months, give or take a day or two."

"Then let's get started," the Governor said with a smile. "Deploy the terraforming 'bots and I'll go inform the citizenry of the timetable."

"Yes, sir," Grayson said, saluting (which was odd, as his robe billowed ridiculously whenever he did so) and blinking out.

"If you'll excuse me, Admiral," del Rio said, standing. "I'll leave you to the other side of the operation."

The doors opened, and the Governor paused before going through them. "Keep my people safe, Yuri."

"You have my word, Andrew," Pyetrsyn pledged. "No alien will set a boot on Refuge unless it's through the debris of every ship I have."

The doors shut, and the Governor was gone.

"Honor, what's the status on the inner-system sensor network?" he asked, relaxing back into his seat.

"The skeleton net for the inner system is already in place, and the Prowlers are dropping the first of the outer buoys now. We'll have full coverage from Refuge to five light-hours in two days, with an average max delay time for lightspeed information of 30 minutes for data collection, an average max delay time for mass and emissions readings through Slipspace of less than a nanosecond, and an average Slipspace comm delay time of just over a microsecond for inner system relays, up to a millisecond for the outermost. We're looking to have a 15 light-hour radius of coverage by the end of the month, nearing 17 near the ecliptic."

"How many probes is that, out of curiosity?" he asked.

Honor paused for a moment as she calculated the numbers. "That would be approximately 40,0000 Mark XIV's, sir."

He winced. "And how much did those cost?"

"At 96,430 credits per probe, 3.8572 billion credits, not taking into account transportation, maintenance and placement costs. With those included, it comes to just above 5 billion credits, with an annual maintenance and replacement cost of about 500 million. I estimate an additional 60 billion will be invested in expanding the net in the next 5 years, with maintenance costs topping out at 8 billion per annum."

He winced again. "That much?"

"Early warning systems are the biggest obstacle to successfully starting a private colony. This is a skeleton net, which will need to be expanded greatly once we have some planetside manufacturing and transshipping to cut down on costs, and the estimated GDP of Refuge will take 20 years to pay off the debt, not counting terraforming costs, unanticipated disasters, and with a high GDP allocation rate to the payoff. More realistically, this colony will take half a century to begin being profitable to the UNSC as a whole." She paused again. "However, with the military subsidies and probabilities of rapid military and scientific expansion here, if a war breaks out and Refuge is successfully held, the colony could break even in as little as a decade."

The admiral frowned. "I see. Let's hope for the larger number, though."

"Yes, sir."

-REDCOBRA-

_August 25, 2561_

BRONCO sighed as the transit completed. "How many more systems do we have to go through?"

"Four, sir. Only a week more, judging by average traffic patterns." Victor was a bit slow in responding as he began to tally every ship insystem squawking an IFF and surveyed the planetary bodies.

"Do we know where we are in normal space?"

"As of the last transit, we were about 15,000 lightyears away from UNSC space. The stellar mappers haven't gotten out this far, so that's the best estimate I can get you from our sensors, a margin of error of a few hundred lightyears either way. Would you like me to tell you when I've completed the approximate numbers for this system?" He barely spared a glance towards BRONCO, engrossed in the uncountable bytes he was sifting through.

"Yes. How long will that be?"

"About 8 hours, sir."

BRONCO sighed. "Anton, up for another game of blackjack?"

"Of course, sir. It will help me refine my random probability generators."

The agent asked, "Why is that something that needs to be done?"

"When jamming systems or hiding them, it's often done with a wash of 'random' sound to drown everything out if you don't have the right key or system. But computer-generated random noise is rarely totally random—that takes too much power for things like personal comms to handle. So while all the big channels will be largely unbreakable without inside access, another problem entirely, personal comms only use pseudo-random noise unless you've got a full-fledged Smart AI inside. That means if I can refine my probability pseudo-random algorithms enough, I'll be able to break certain jamming patterns and detect hidden signals in background noise. It will greatly help area awareness."

BRONCO nodded, only half-following. "I've never been comm-trained, so I'll take your word for it."

The virtual cards shuffled themselves in his visor. "You're not cheating, right?"

Anton shook his head with a smile. "I asked Victor to generate these random shufflings. So I don't know the order any more than you."

BRONCO chuckled. "You'll probably still beat me."

"Likely," Anton agreed. "Your sense of probabilities isn't… quite as tuned as mine, yes?"

"Just deal me a card and let's get this over with."

-REDCOBRA-

_July 8, 2561_

_ 1: What's this problem that's got you so riled up, [4]?_

_ 4: __**This **__is what is the problem! All of our assumptions will have to be radically recalculated, and not in a good way. We may have already been compromised—_

_ 5: What are we looking at, [4]?_

_ 2: That's a translation matrix…_

_ 4: It's a Batarian-to-English matrix. Only problem is, we didn't make this one._

_ 6: Do you mean—?_

_ 4: Yes. The original language in this matrix is Batarian._

_ 3: Oh. Oh, hell!_

_ 4: This changes everything. We couldn't find anything else besides some vague interoffice memos—the data is physically separate from the network. We need boots on the ground to get us the full story._

_ 1: I agree completely. How did these xenos manage to get one of these? This makes it obvious that they've met humans before, but how? We've certainly never met them in person._

_ 3: There's one thing I keep coming back to. It's noted that the Batarians are a slave culture, and regularly raid other planets for slaves._

_ 1: Oh no. That can't be a coincidence._

_ 6: My thoughts exactly._

_ 5: Quick, get us a list of the colonies whose last message was WINTER—_

_ *Viewing session closed*_

-REDCOBRA-

_August 26, 2561_

"Mr. President! Mr. President!" A uniformed man came bustling in through the permanently open door. "We've got more contacts. Looks like the bastards are coming back for another round."

"And the old girl's taken too much damage from the previous two," the president muttered, stroking his salt-and-pepper beard. "They're not going to be able to take her out unless they want to destroy the whole colony—which isn't their style—but we've run out of Archers to push them back with. The past ten years of these constant raids have finally defeated our mightiest weapon." He tapped at the table for a moment. "We can take a few out before they hit orbit with the stationary, but all our swivels and offsite secondaries were slagged two months ago, and only two are back to operational status. Once they hit orbit, all we can do is keep the big fish away from the city. They'll be able to send in troopships—and the collection ships—nearly unmolested."

He straightened. "It'll be up to the army, now. I'll do all I can from here, but the final act won't be driving off a desultory attack on the capital.

"No, this time it'll be the opening scene." He stood. "Sound the alarms, get the militia mustered, and start escorting the civilians to the bunkers. We'll begin getting the defenses ready now. How long do we have?"

"About 10 hours, sir. They're meandering in under an evasive pattern as usual, probably trying to avoid us taking potshots at them."

"Right. Then Shangri-La should be mostly ready." He patted the bulkhead.

"For what little this battered old lady can do, the Everest will be ready."

"You need to head to the War Bunker, sir," the man said, wiping sweat from his wrinkled brow. "You'll be needed to coordinate the defense."

"I suppose you're right," the president said with a sigh. "Lead the way, Gavin."

"Glad to, Preston."

-REDCOBRA-

_A/N: I'll just leave you with that blindingly obvious hint._

_I also changed the dividers to help make it easier to differentiate story pieces and PoV changes. Tell me if it helps!_

_ Third, I actually did the math for the parameters Honor gave (15 light-hour radius sphere around Refuge, discounting the area in atmosphere and the planet itself, assuming equal density [which I handwaved by accounting for greater density around the ecliptic and lesser density above and below], and a 30 minute max light-speed reception time [meaning a space between probes of about a light-hour]), and while they're certainly rough approximations (and took me an hour or two to figure out), the number of probes for that problem is fairly close to that number. If you want to see my math (and it's really rough, because it's hard to get spherical objects to overlap within a larger spherical object when you're dealing with numbers well into scientific notation, and I'm not exactly a spherical geometry genius), I will be happy to show it to you. If someone here happens to be a spherical geometry genius, and my numbers are off, PLEASE tell me so I can fix it._

_ It also shows the problem of actually finding things smaller than star systems or planets in space—because space is huge. Mind-bogglingly vast. This 3-trillion-credit warning system of 27,000 probes will give, at best (assuming that ships head straight in at their best speed of 15 times c, and don't stop until they hit orbit), about 16 seconds of advance warning, in the case of an FTL assault from a ME race, (I did the math on that, too!) but those few seconds are essential and incredibly helpful when you have AI's running defense networks. Unfortunately, those few seconds, even with future tech making probes powerful and small, cost a lot. And this is only because I gave the probes instant data gathering methods. Had they been limited to lightspeed data gathering, the data would have arrived, at best, 16 seconds ahead (assuming they go right over a probe), and at worst the data would arrive 29 minutes, 44 seconds after the attack. Which isn't very helpful._

_ It's less of a problem with Mass Relays, where they are relatively fixed and can be picketed without too much difficulty, but in any situation where either side is not using said relays, things are going to get confusing. Even when the other side's ships are noticeably hotter than the rest of space, there's just so much of it that it takes time to find anything. And money. Especially that._

_EDIT: Thanks to the estimable Arbitrary for correcting my numbers for the probe numbers. Numbers have been corrected accordingly._


	6. Infiltration

_August 26, 2561_

Andrew del Rio, governor of the Hideaway System and the planet of Refuge, looked down on the world he was to administrate. The terraforming process was starting to bear fruit already—the once-grey world was now a shade of greenish-grey as the genemodded trees and grasses began to choke out the poisonous local biomass on the continent selected for the main settlement.

The other landmasses would be largely preserved nature-wise, with ecologists taking samples of both unaltered species and genemodding other species to survive on the new atmospheric composition and lower particulate count. There were some useful plants they had already found—one had a trunk nearly as strong as iron, strong enough that even wooden buildings constructed with it would have the structural strength of a metal building and the ability to stop most personal arms.

He'd immediately ordered all the harvesting he could divert with his multi-purpose 'bots, to be used rather than the valuable Titanium-A intended for the purpose. While this wood could never be used in any military capacity, it made buildings for civilians far tougher. The stuff would certainly make a nice export once the orbital elevator was up and running.

Too bad it was projected to be a year before even the first strand would be operational, with the full 10-thread station put at 4 years until completion. Until that point, there would be no effective exports—even with limited anti-grav and fusion propulsion, ships capable of entering and leaving gravity wells either didn't have the cargo space to make it economical or were busy carrying other things.

Segwaying nicely onto the next point of his interest, he moved his gaze from the planet far below to the ODP being constructed in orbit, winking with the flashes of chemical bonding. The skeletal structure looked menacing, with its vast gun's outline in place but missing any of the supporting infrastructure and countergrav that made it a sustainable station.

All told, there were trillions of credits being poured into this colony at a time when the UNSC was already hemorrhaging money to rebuild most of its former worlds. With nearly a quarter of the fleet out here, and a new terraforming project underway, this was likely the single greatest expense on the budget as an item.

In addition, its isolation worried him. They were three months away from the limits of human space even before the war, and the nearest planet that wasn't a radioactive dustball was four months out. How could he expect to get a thriving trade up when the times were those of pre-war distances, not the days it now took to traverse the rest of human space?

More worrying was the lack of any potential military support. First and foremost, Andrew still thought like a military man, and they were awfully far out on a limb, their necks stretched out, just begging to have someone cut it. It would take several hours just for word to travel between Refuge and Earth, and if you wanted to actually get things that had mass here, it would be four months at the earliest before any reinforcement could arrive.

Four months where his colonists would be very isolated and exposed to the threat that loomed large before him.

These new xenos… this Citadel… showed signs of being larger than the former Covenant, spread throughout galactic space like an insane tangle of 3-D spot art. They were a nearly complete unknown, and every additional briefing he received only added more worries to his list.

They were all alone, there were aliens on all sides, and he knew little to nothing on their capabilities or strategic depth. Refuge could be Harvest all over again.

And that scared him more than anything. More than being in charge of the lives of fifty-thousand first-wave colonists and 20,000 military personnel. More than being personally responsible for the well-being of an entire planet. If this was going to turn into a Harvest, there wouldn't even be a functional space elevator to get his people out. Some would be evacuated, but most would die.

And it would be his fault all over again. Just like Requiem.

Just like New Phoenix.

-REDCOBRA-

_August 27, 2561_

"Sir, orbital insertion in 15 minutes. Please make final checks pre-insertion."

BRONCO flicked through the functions on his SPI armor. Shields checked green. HUD was good. Translation matrix appeared to be running good, but as to its accuracy it was impossible to tell. Waste collection and recycling, as well as the water collection system, were green. Medical system was checking out perfectly.

Servos and super-conductive gel were working, and the chameleon plates were passively camouflaging within parameters.

Most importantly, the infiltration suite and the holographic emitters checked out green.

"One more visual check," he muttered, activating the holographic emitters. "Victor, are you reading the right readings?"

"The hologram has 95% fidelity, sir," victor confirmed. "A bit lower than hoped, but unless you're getting hit by a vehicle at high speeds, the hard-light emitters will simulate realistic impacts and the visuals are perfect. You're good to go."

"5 minutes until re-entry," Anton reminded. "Strap in now, sir."

BRONCO sat back and clipped the heavy-duty restraints down. The cage encircled most of his body, making movement almost impossible—which was a good thing, when one was descending from orbit at terminal velocity nearly the entire journey.

Anxious, he waited the endless minutes to reentry, and it was almost a relief to see the familiar corona of reentry embrace the pod in its wrathful grasp. "Reentry," Anton declared unnecessarily. "Beginning suppression of ground-based radar and early-warning systems."

"Diffusing EM signature and spoofing systems," Victor noted.

The pod banged and shook as it descended towards the lonely, isolated forest below. The winds hurled the pod from side to side, the small maneuvering fins angling back and forth to keep it as stable as it could—which wasn't stable at all.

"Crosswinds higher than expected," Victor muttered. "Compensating."

Then, an almighty hammer smashed the pod, sending it spinning sickeningly—every dropper's worst nightmare.

"Unexpected jet stream!" Victor said, unperturbed. "Being blown off-course."

The pod slowly righted, too slowly for BRONCO's liking. The far horizon finally loomed into view. That meant that final procedures were only seconds away—and the pod was still wobbling dangerously, unstable on its axis.

"We'll get you down alive," Anton said, "But things are going to get iffy for a moment."

Muttered curses filled the quickly-heating space as the rockets popped, and the pod jerked, before tilting to one side.

The curses ceased to be muttered as he fell the last 200 feet sideways.

-REDCOBRA-

BRONCO recovered slowly from the crash, consciousness gradually returning as the various alarms of both the pod and his own HUD screeched in his ears. It was a piece of luck that he was even alive, but the multiple warnings showed much of his supplies weren't quite as lucky.

The pod was a total loss—everything was broken, likely beyond repair. The storage locker, luckily, appeared to be only lightly damaged—but from here he couldn't ascertain the status of any of his supplementary weapons or supplies. His suit was reporting minor damage to it and himself, but it was well within normal limits, and the passive repair tech would take only a few minutes to make it good.

Of more concern was that the pod's one-way glass showed he was most definitely within a structure. The hole in the roof loomed above him, still shedding debris. Even more concerning was the alien—the Batarian, it looked like—studying the pod. He could see its eyes track up and down the extent of its sleek lines, before returning to the canopy, scratching its head in confusion.

Hurriedly, BRONCO grabbed the M7B(Covert Mod) off of his thigh and checked the clip, racking in a bullet. It appeared to be working despite the crash, which was good.

Looking back at the alien, he saw it reach for some kind of comms system and put it up to its mouth. Not good. Not good not good not good. "Sir?" Anton said. "We're about to be compromised!"

"I know," he spat, slamming the emergency jettison for the canopy. It let out a piercing warning wail, loud enough to give instant headaches to those without ear protection, and the Batarian jerked its head back out of the canopy's view (as the wail was designed to do), and dropped the communicator, which clattered off of the glass and onto the ground the pod was embedded in.

Then, with the bang of exploding bolts, the canopy shot up through the hole in the roof, and before it had even clanged to the ground outside, BRONCO was leaping out of the pod. The Batarian's eyes widened in surprise, and BRONCO saw its hand move towards something on its thigh that looked like a weapon.

Instinctively, he threw his weapon up and jerked at the trigger three times.

The M7B was designed to kill without leaving a mess or much of a sound, to aid in covert ops. To this end, the low-caliber, subsonic rounds were easily suppressed and biodegraded after use to prevent examination. They also, however, held something that made them extremely lethal—a HE charge in the tip.

The first bullet performed exactly as expected, hitting just above the sternum, passing behind it, and then detonating and pulping heart and lungs. The only sign was a small entry wound and a dribble of blood.

The second bullet, however, aided by the hasty aim, traveled higher, hitting the edge of the trachea, deflecting slightly, and detonating on the side of the neck, shredding the arteries and veins there and sending a huge spray of blood into the air as the already-dead Batarian crumpled backwards.

The third hit just above the first set of eyes, but rather than passing through the skull and then detonating within the brain, as designed, the bullet lodged itself in the thicker bone ridge between the eyes and then exploded, ripping the upper half of the alien's face off and sending it flying into the wall and ceiling behind the corpse.

Rather than a clean kill, the hasty firing had coated much of the wall and ceiling in crimson, as well as mangled the xeno terribly. "A bit messy, but effective," Anton commented. "Might want to watch your aim next time."

BRONCO frowned. "That's… not right." He holstered the weapon. "I thought this was supposed to kill cleanly?"

Casually, he took off his helmet and held it with one arm as he breathed in deeply. "Feels nice to get off of recycled air," he said, as he moved to the corner opposite the Batarian and kneeled. "Victor, can you check to see if he got a communication out—"

Then he vomited.

After a moment, he wiped his mouth with one glove and then stood shakily, resealing his helmet. "Right," he coughed. "We can't stay here; a comm might have gotten out and the reentry was probably seen, with how messy it was."

He moved over to the pod and slammed the button for the storage section, which obediently unsealed as BRONCO grunted and hauled it onto his back. Then, he keyed the self-destruct for a one-minute detonation.

On the way to the door, his eyes strayed over to the corpse of the Batarian, and he suppressed a heave and swallowed. "Right. Victor, where am I heading?"

"Placing a HUD waypoint now, sir," Victor replied. "It's still some distance away—the buffeting threw us off course 47.5 klicks off."

"Do we have enough supplies?"

"It should be more than sufficient, sir. Even if it proves lacking, we have determined that most Batarian foods are edible by humans."

The self-destruct behind him hit zero, and a gush of flame billowed out the hole in the roof of the house. The flames were hot enough to reduce the pod, capable of withstanding reentry, to slag; the house didn't stand a chance and was soon a blazing inferno.

Within an hour, there would be nothing left but a smouldering ruin and a small puddle of metal and plastic; the rest would burn or evaporate away, leaving no trace. Not even the body. Or the blood…

He cleared his throat and kept moving, heavy footsteps silenced by his enhanced reflexes.

-REDCOBRA-

_August 30, 2561_

"Hold up, sir," Anton said softly. "We're about to hit the outskirts of the town. The building we're trying to hit is in the very center, about 5 klicks in. I can't tell exact distance—these streets are labyrinthine, and the metal's wreaking havoc with the suit sensors. We'll be reduced to perhaps 30 meters motion detection, and line-of-sight for other sensors, most likely, once inside."

It had been a multiple-day journey, moving slowly under the cover of night and the trees, heat dampening on, to avoid any possible mode of detection. "Right." BRONCO quickly chinned the holo-camo system and waited for it to boot. That was the biggest downside to the current system—the disguise was nearly perfect, but in order to accomplish it, the system took several minutes to finish constructing the outer appearance of whatever the user ordered. BRONCO closed his eyes and waited patiently—the process of building up the holograms was a bit annoying. He found watching it caused eyestrain rather quickly.

"Complete," Victor said, eventually. "We're at 91% integrity and climbing. Looks like the system will max out at 92.5%." He clicked his virtual tongue. "That's lower than I had projected—the fall probably damaged a minor component."

Anton interjected, "In any case, you should be fine—just don't hit anything moving faster than about 30 klicks an hour. That includes punches and kicks, sir, so try not to use CQB unless absolutely necessary. There's a high probability a strike will make the soft-light systems fail entirely, and the hard-light systems will be fairly obvious after that."

"Got it. Thanks for the tip." BRONCO stood and stretched, cracking his neck as he slid the storage container off his back. "See anywhere good to stash this?"

"There's a deep tree root about 2 meters behind you," Anton offered. "A little bit of digging and some camouflage on top and no one will ever find it."

"Sounds good. Drop a waypoint on its location, please."

"Already done."

BRONCO knelt and studied the space beneath the tree root. It was indeed very spacious, just barely too small to fit the container. Grabbing the multitool on his back, he unfolded the spade section and set to excavating that extra bit of space.

It was quick, though tiring, work, and within fifteen minutes the space was adequately large.

Opening the locker, he grabbed another clip of ammo to replace the three bullets he'd used, as well as a silenced submachine gun for that extra oomph, and relocked the door. Then he slid the locker inside the hollow and shoveled most of the loose dirt back on top, scattering the rest around the small clearing. Finally, he broke off some branches and leaves, and arranged them carefully but randomly on top.

When he stood back and surveyed his work, it was completely hidden. Anyone who wasn't specifically looking for that hollow would never know that it had ever existed. Even a concerted search would take some time to find such a spot.

"Right. Now that that's done…" He dusted his gauntlets off and restowed the multitool. "Let's get moving. Has PONZI gotten any results yet?"

"If you need them, we can get you a small amount of xeno currency off of the less-secured accounts on-planet, as long as you can get me access to one of their currency transfer machines," Victor said, "but the loss will be noticed quickly at this point. You won't be able to keep your purchases unnoticed once they come sniffing down the line of the theft. I would not recommend it."

Anton added, "And wireless transfers are a no-go at this point."

BRONCO frowned. "Noted." He began to walk towards the large clearing around the town, only a few hundred meters away. As he stepped, he looked down, temporarily disconcerted by the sight of distinctly non-human feet replacing his own. Carefully, he began metering his step to a normal stride for a xeno of this size, working up into a natural-looking walk on the outside. However, for him, it was distinctly unnatural and even a little uncomfortable—it was good he'd practiced it so much before the mission.

He stepped into the cleared zone and spotted the buildings ahead, a sprawling series of one- and two- story buildings building densely up a gradual slope, getting more stories all the way, up to a large skyscraper up at the top of the hill, on which a large flag, the one of the xenos' government, flew proudly.

It looked just like any human town, and he lost a stride in surprise at how similar it was. Quickly recovering, he sped his pace and headed towards the nearest street, blowing out a breath. "Here we go."

-REDCOBRA-

_6: We've got about half a dozen potential planets. The criteria all match for this list, here-_

_4: Make that five. I just got word, about an hour ago, that our prowler returned from the first post-war scan of the closest, Yamus II, on a routine trip. The signs are consistent with glassing, and some deep records we managed to recover from the polar storage site show what happened. The poor planet fended off a cruiser with their surface-to-orbit mass driver—and in retaliation, the Covenant dropped an assault carrier with escorts on them. It was over in a week._

_6: -Five, then. The next step is to dispatch Prowlers to the rest—As you can see, they're rather far-flung. It'll be a few days before we get reports back._

_1: And then?_

_3: Once we find the planet, that means there __**has **__to be an artifact nearby. The xenos tend not to travel far from the 'Relays.' We'll have to send Prowlers to all the systems within 50 light-years that haven't been surveyed to check for relays._

_5: Every one of them? That'll take a month, at the least!_

_3: It will. But we cannot afford to miss another artifact within our borders. That offers another assault vector—one we'll have to cover immediately. I'm detailing half a taskforce and the _Infinity _to offer blocking when we find it until we can get more permanent defenses in place. Just hope we find it sooner in the month than later._

_2: Another artifact? Just how common are these things?_

_4: From what we've begun decoding from ROSETTA, a depressingly high number. They could be seeded all around and we wouldn't know it, if they were in systems we didn't bother surveying because they held nothing useful._

_5: So you're saying we'll have to survey every star in UNSC space? That's a Herculean task!_

_6: It will take years, but it has to be done._

_1: I suppose. Best to be prepared._

_A/N: Just a note: I added some dates to earlier chapters to help with the timeframe of this story. Also, I'm looking for quite a few minor characters to help fill out my roster, of both humans, batarians, and turians. However, no Mary Sues, and don't give them to me unless you're prepared to let them die._

_I need a name, age, gender, basic physical characteristics, and basic backstory._


	7. The Weave of Fate

BRONCO was immediately struck by the… sameness of the town as he strode casually through it, eyes darting from place to place. The layout was similar to many of the old Earth cities, the shops looked generally the same, and even the vendors, if his translator was working, were hawking their wares in much the same way.

The bustle of aliens on the sidewalks as cars hovered in the street and above their heads was intimately familiar to him. He'd grown up in this kind of city… and the familiarity felt so wrong. They were aliens; the city should feel alien. The Covenant's ships and cities certainly did. This city felt too human, complete with the occasional weapon he could see folded up in holsters or on back.

One shop, with a sign that proclaimed in bright Batarian script, 'Weapons,' caught his eye. It might be good to get some native weapons to blend in. And perhaps some to bring back to R they always appreciated real samples more than computer data.

"How much money can I get before they start actively tracking the leak?" he asked.

Anton replied, "Technically, none. But I can siphon less than a thousand equivalent of their credits out of a few accounts and only trigger a low-level search—you should be in the clear for a few hours, at least. Why?"

"I'm thinking of grabbing some xeno weaponry," he said. "Are they within the price range?"

Anton hummed for a moment. "If you get some of the lower-level, bare-bones weapons, yes," he said. "From what I'm seeing, the weapons should give you a more range than your covert stuff, but by that same token, they're less discreet. If you have to make noise, though, a native weapon might be nice for deflecting suspicion."

Victor added, "However, if the siphoned credits go to a weapon, the search will almost certainly kick up. In that case, we'll have less than an hour to vacate the premises, and security at our target may well be stepped up."

BRONCO paused and mulled it over, staring at the weapons display in the glass. "I think it's worth it. R&amp;D is probably begging for an actual sample of this stuff, after all. I'm going to go with it. Label it as 'retrieving research assets and increasing immersion.'"

"Labeled, sir," Anton said, a tone of amusement in his voice. "If you could move over to the transfer machine on the corner, there?"

He stood in front of the machine for a minute, hitting random buttons and generally looking busy, as the transfer was completed. An alarm symbol popped up on the ATM, but as the AI's finished their siphon and withdrew, they wiped the code of the whole device, and the screen popped and went black as the operating system was replaced with a series of zeros.

BRONCO opened the door of the shop and entered, stiffening slightly as a bell rang. He was already starting to hate the similarities. Why couldn't these aliens be more alien?

"Welcome!" a voice called from behind several rows of displays. "The register is back here. Feel free to browse."

BRONCO did so. Each weapon was lovingly maintained and polished, so customers could admire the work put into each one. These ones at the front were certainly works of art—but they were far too expensive and looked more decorative than functional. The folding feature was nice, however.

He moved back a row. These, while still expensive, were definitely more utilitarian. Each listed a set of specifications above the weapon and the price below. His translator struggled with the text, making some of the specs hard to decipher, but from what he could tell, these weapons would compare nicely to many of the weapons he carried on a regular basis.

The third row of shelves carried what he was looking for—bland, mass-produced weapons. The rows of nearly-identical guns made it hard to pick, especially with the nearly-unreadable weapons specs, but eventually he settled on one with an extra-large trigger grip for his rather bulky gauntlets and a basic sight.

He turned the corner to the register, a rather diminutive Batarian sitting behind it. "How can I help you…" it said, looking up and then trailing off. There was a difference in inflection as it continued, "Are you looking to purchase that?"

"I am," the agent confirmed, handing over the weapon.

"That will come to 800 credits," the shopkeeper informed him.

"Transfer 800 credits to the shop," he ordered, as Victor confirmed.

"Thank you for your business please come again," the Batarian said, with no change in inflection, like it was a rehearsed monologue with no feeling in it.

As BRONCO walked away, he caught, "They're getting more uppity every year…"

What did that mean? It was the first sign of something different from the norm, something that his briefings hadn't caught. Was the shopkeeper just in a bad mood? Did his disguise resemble someone else?

Or was he missing something? Though the lack of data was disquieting on a professional level, on a personal level it was relieving. Finally, something that made the aliens alien! They weren't human, after all.

They just did a very good job pretending.

Placing the weapon on the strip on his back, he waited with his back casually against the wall as the disguise reformed around it, hiding the weapon on his back beneath layers of hard light and holograms. Then, he continued on his way towards the skyscraper that was his target.

Gradually, he noticed something. Though most of the Batarians on the outskirts had looked similar to him, the deeper in the city he traversed the more they looked different—though he couldn't put his finger on what it was that caused the difference.

Victor answered it for him. "It appears that more of these Batarians have the other variant of crest," he said quietly. "We deemed it suboptimal, as they appear to be less common, but the demographics shift seem to indicate the crests are signs of economic or cultural prosperity. Note the more affluent surroundings."

Soon, BRONCO began to get second glances, and even the occasional glare. Though his HUD told him the holograms were near-perfect and that he couldn't have been detected, that it was merely his guise that drew the attention, his skin prickled involuntarily.

"Would it be possible to change the facial features to match this demographic more?" he asked calmly. "The attention may make it difficult to remain unnoticed."

"We don't have enough data on the subtle biological differences between the crests," Victor said apologetically. "We could mimic the outward appearance to humans, but to xenos it could appear off. There's no way to tell at this point."

BRONCO cursed mildly. "Well, that's going to make this harder." His hand strayed to the SMG on his hip.

It did not escape his notice that though the gun was invisible, many eyes slid away from him like water at the gesture. The populace seemed familiar with that movement and its connotations—another interesting thing that he'd missed.

Though, the briefing had stated that Batarians were no stranger to piracy, mercenary work, and slavery… perhaps there was some clandestine activity in this colony that had been missed?

The small details began to pile up, and though nothing had compromised his mission—as of yet—he was beginning to sweat. He did not like unknowns.

He continued his even stride into the belly of the beast.

-REDCOBRA-

_ Today's Date: August 28, 2561_

_ Raines, _

_ How is it in the outer system? It's good to hear that you've managed to gather up most of the miners and the science team out on Calypso. That makes, what, 5,000 you've rescued?_

_ In grimmer news, we've lost the satellite cities. The Everest shot down three ships and made them pay for it, but the bastards dropped kinetic impactors on all of them. Killed everyone we had there. Luckily, the evacuations were nearly complete, but the list of the missing is above 50,000, and I'm afraid that number won't shrink by much. Both the secondary MACs we managed to repair are gone again._

_ The outer suburbs of Shangri-La have been reduced to rubble in the fighting, but it's rubble we still own. The front line is getting awfully thin, however—we have squads covering company-level areas, and before long I'm going to have to order a retreat to prevent a breakthrough hitting the city proper._

_ Everest is still keeping the big fish away, but I'm not sure how long she can last. The outer armor belt is almost entirely gone, and soon the only protection we'll have will be the decking itself. We have reinforcement around the MAC and the reactors being placed around the clock, but it's not keeping up with the damage._

_ Once we lose Everest, we won't have a choice. Either I surrender us to a life of brutal slavery, or we die._

_ I hope I won't have to make the choice—but it's looking likelier all the time._

_ It sounds grim, I know, but I'm ordering you not to come rushing in and get your command killed. Three frigates and a handful of ore carriers aren't going to be able to do much against the numbers they've brought this time._

_ No, there's something more important for you to do. Go to Earth. See if humanity's cradle remains._

_ If not, find somewhere to settle far away from here. If, against all the odds, however, Earth remains… tell them about the xenos. Give them everything we have so they might be prepared._

_ Come back, if you can, though I doubt we'll be here by then._

_ Godspeed, Admiral. And goodbye._

_ -President Cole_

-REDCOBRA-

_The same day_

Another day in the Citadel Security Forces, another day of breaking up petty crimes and sitting at desks staring at sensors. Sometimes, Garrus Vakarian hated his job.

For two weeks, they'd been tracking a group of Batarians suspected of low-level slave trafficking. For two weeks, around the clock, his team had been tracking each and every one of the half-dozen, watching their movements and the goods they transported in their moving business (the reason that a flag had popped up on them in the first place, being an entirely family-owned, small moving business run by Batarians), with no success.

Watching them load and unload boxes, parcels, and packages for two weeks was driving him mad. Only the fact that he hadn't had to personally stake out the site (ah, the benefits of finally being one rung up on the ladder) had saved him so far.

He leaned back with a sigh, watching as the two Batarians in the van manhandled a large, rolled-up rug from the house into the back.

Then the rug twitched.

Garrus sat bolt upright, leaning forwards as he blinked. A second twitch confirmed his supicions. There was something in that rug, and it was alive. This was it.

"We've got what looks like a live one wrapped in that rug," he said, activating his comm. "Shadow team, break off and get ready for the intercept.

The camera jerked as the stakeout officer reacted in surprise. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Garrus said, annoyed. "Let's go—we don't want to lose this one. I'm enroute now."

"Moving," the officer reported back. "Where do we want to stop them?"

"Edge of the ward," Garrus decided in a split-second. "We don't want too many side passages for them to try to escape in."

Moving out of his office, he took the steps down two at a time, waving as he passed other officers moving around the precinct. He made it to the garage, and quickly grabbed a set of keys without signing the equipment sheet. There wasn't time—he would sign for the car after he got back. Paperwork took too much time. He wanted to be there when the bastards got busted.

It wasn't far to the designated spot, and Garrus parked just out of sight and stood below, waiting patiently. They'd be coming around the corner any minute now, and that's when the stakeout team would flip out the lights. Idly, he fingered his holster. And if they tried to run, he'd put a round or two through their intakes.

Soon enough, the van came around the corner, and the lights of the stakeout team flicked on from a side alley right on cue. Garrus smiled. That was good timing; he'd have to put it in his report. The stakeout team had gotten the short end of this assignment. A cake job was going to be in the works for them next week.

Rather than running, the moving van descended smoothly, coming to a stop just beyond him. His team parked right beside his lurking place, and he shared a covert nod with the driver as he exited the vehicle.

He moved over to the van and knocked on the window. As it rolled down, he said politely, "Sorry to bother you, sirs, but I'm afraid you've been selected for a random inspection. If I could ask you to step out of the vehicle?"

"What—a random inspection?" the Batarian stammered, face quickly growing ruddy with anger "This is an outrage! Discrimination against Batarians! I will sue!"

"Sorry, sir, it's a random count based on vehicle number. Please step out of the car." The officer's voice hardened slightly. "Along with your passenger."

Still gesturing wildly, accompanied by wild histrionics, the Batarians exited, clustering together just beyond the van. Garrus watched them closely—their outrage seemed genuine, but underneath was a current of hesitation, with darting eyes and faces already shining with sweat.

He grinned savagely. Here it came.

One officer opened the front doors and began to inspect the driver's compartment for show, but the other moved to the back of the

Van, making a show of being out of sight of the Batarians. They both stiffened.

As the van doors opened, the officer looked inside, shining a flashlight, just as the rug bucked another time, muffled noises coming from within. "What's this?" he asked loudly. "Is there something in this rug?"

That's when the Batarians began to move, just as Garrus had expected. They ran, obviously aiming for the closest alleyway. He stepped out, hands already bringing his weapon up, and boomed, "Freeze! You're under arrest for the trafficking of sapient beings!"

They froze, which Garrus had to give them credit for. They may have been stupid, running a slave ring on the Citadel, but they weren't so stupid as to run from C-Sec officers. "Hands up, don't move!" he ordered.

"We can explain," one called over his shoulder desperately.

"I'm sure you can, and you'll get your chance—back at the precinct," he responded. "Officer Navarrus, come cuff these two."

Navarrus came out of the driver's side, pulling cuffs from his belt. "Yes, sir!"

Garrus moved to the van and the open rear doors. Taking one end of the rug, he and Officer Linarum carefully moved it out of the cramped space, and he cut the ties of the rug holding it rolled up.

The moment the rug's many layers began to unroll, whoever was inside began to thrash wildly, nearly falling off the back of the van. "Hey, hey!" Linarum said, holding it still as Garrus continued to unroll it. "You're safe now—we're with C-Sec."

The thrashing did not abate, and Garrus hurried his work. With startling finality, the rug was fully unrolled, spilling to the ground, revealing its cargo. Initially, he thought it was a bundled-up Asari—but the pale fingers, and the… whatever on its head was definitely not Asari.

"What in the spirits is this?" he asked incredulously.

-REDCOBRA-

_A/N: And the threads come ever closer, as two groups of humanity close in and the Turians smell a rat. A note: the caste system of the Batarians is going to become important. Keep it in mind._


	8. The Precinct

Garrus stabbed a finger at the… alien, then to the Batarians. "What is this?" he demanded. "A new sapient species, and your first act is to enslave them? And then try to smuggle one through the Citadel without anyone noticing?" he said incredulously. "You have to be kidding me. I knew Batarians were dumb, but—"

"Hey!" one of the Batarians retorted, "You can't just throw around such racist accusations!"

Garrus rolled his head and looked at the Batarian with the dullest expression he could manage. "You're not helping your case."

The Batarian shushed with alacrity, just as Officer Navarrus blurted, "Sir, it's making a break for it!"

"What?" Garrus turned, only to see the alien smash an unexpected, lucky punch right to Linarum's faceplate, as he was bent over attempting to assure it, and jump into a shambling half-run. Linarum shook his head, stunned, as Garrus gave pursuit. "Where are you going? Stop!" he called, but the alien didn't hear him, or if it did, made no response. It wasn't hard to catch up to it, luckily, and a firm grasp on its shoulder arrested its progress, though it flailed wildly. Prepared, Garrus avoided most of the untrained, unaimed strikes and weathered the three that struck him. "Will you calm down?" he said in exasperation, but yet again it ignored him; if anything it only flailed harder, screaming unintelligibly. "Come on!"

"Sir?" Navarrus said over the com. "I don't think it understands you."

Garrus paused. It had no omnitool or other personal electronics, and if it was a new species it obviously didn't understand Turian. Of course it wouldn't understand him; this was no drunken bar fight or domestic dispute. He resisted a sudden urge to rub his forehead.

"I'd agree, Navarrus," he said gratefully, dragging the alien gracelessly back to the van. "Get the translator matrix from the suspects."

"We won't give you anything without proper authorization," the braver of the two said proudly. "You'll have to talk to our lawyer," he continued, smirking. "I understand he's quite well-paid."

Garrus' frown turned into a grimace. Lawyers? Paperwork? It would be months before a single line of code came from that side. Months which he didn't have—by that point, the entire operation would be packed up and moved, and the trail would go cold, likely forever.

"Hold it," he said to Linarum, who grabbed the other arm of the alien, flinching instinctively as he became the new target of panicked fists and feet, ineffectual as they were. Garrus stalked over to the two handcuffed Batarians. "Give me the translation matrix, now," he growled.

"You can't make us," the other Batarian piped up, encouraged by his compatriot's audacity.

"That so? Give it to me, or I promise you'll regret it."

Resolutely, they shook their heads, and Garrus' fists clenched. "OK, then." In one fluid motion, his hand went to his pistol, unfolded it, flipped off the safety, and levelled it at the two. "How about now?"

They blanched. "You can't threaten us! That's police brutality!" the leader protested.

"Oh, it wouldn't be police brutality," Garrus said grimly. "Rather, two slave-trading scumbags were killed resisting arrest when one went for Officer Navarrus' gun." He didn't even bother checking with his compatriots. They'd worked with him for a long time, and they'd quickly reached an… understanding of sorts when it came to cases like this. "Isn't that right, Officer?"

"I would've thought they would be smarter than that, but they were Batarians, after all," Navarrus shrugged, tossing his own gun in front of the two, as they stared in horrified disbelief. "Just look at the evidence, right there! Open-and-shut case—police vs. slavers, and slavers lose, like usual."

That had taken the recalcitrance out of them nicely, Garrus observed. The smaller one was shaking, and even the bolder of the two had turned a shade of the palest green. "Matrix. Now."

They gulped, but the leader slowly shook his head. "You're just bluffing," he said, though his voice shook. "You wouldn't really just gun the two of us down in cold blood—you're C-Sec, after all." The last part had gained confidence again with a sneer, as the customary Batarian attitude reasserted itself.

Perhaps he really was bluffing—certainly no one else had ever resisted this strongly, and he'd never actually executed someone—but that sneer, that arrogance of someone knowledgable about C-Sec, someone who knew they were getting off scot-free due to some lawyer with all too many loopholes to exploit, absolutely infuriated him, and without thinking he moved the gun an inch to the right and fired, a bullet whizzing right past their ears and embedding itself in the dirt with a crack. "Now," he snarled. "Last chance."

"Okay, okay!" the leader screeched in terror. "Just get away, you madman!" Nearly instantly, the notice of a downloadable file beeped on his omnitool, and he punched the holographic buttons with vindictive satisfaction as it downloaded. The Batarian-to-alien synced quickly with his Turian-to-Batarian, and on an afterthought he shot the file off to Navarrus and Linarum. Leaving the trembling slavers where they sat, he turned back to the still-fighting alien. "Calm down!" he urged. "You're safe now—we're with security."

The alien paused, looking back at him in surprise. "Safe? Safe?" it laughed madly. "We thought we were safe on New Jerusalem, until they came. We thought we were safe in the capital, until the jackals ate my family! We thought we were safe when we drove them off, until you dropped in and enslaved us all! Safe? Safe?!" The struggling resumed, and this time Linarum was hard-pressed to keep his hold.

Ate his family?—no. NO. That couldn't be right.

He wheeled on the Batarians. "You ate its children?" he blurted. "What the hell?"

"No, you've got it all wrong!" the slavers said frantically. "It was already like this when we captured it—was like this before we ever landed! The alien's totally mad—it's only good for scientific study now."

"I know you're trying to break me," the alien screamed from behind him. "You Covies trying to get locations from me. But it'll never work, you hear me? I watched the Jackals come. I watched them kill my wife. I watched them eat my children—if that didn't break me, you don't stand a chance! Nothing's safe, not when the Jackals come!"

"Sir," Linarum grunted. "I hate to sound whiny—but this guy's pummeling me, and body armor only helps so much. Tranq it!"

"Can't," Garrus said. "We don't know the biology—might knock it out, might drop dead. We'll have to hold it down till it struggles itself out."

"You have got to be kidding me," Linarum groaned. "Come over here and help me, then!"

As Navarrus looked on, bemused, Garrus took the other arm and together, the two officers wrestled the screaming, kicking alien to the ground. "You've got nothing on Jackals!" it repeated, over and over and over, but gradually its struggles slowed and its voice grew shaky.

Within a few minutes, it simply lay there, sobbing the word, "Jackals." Garrus stood.

"Spirits," he whispered. "What happened to it?" He turned back to the Batarians—or rather, where they had been. The spot where they sat was empty, and Navarrus was sprawled on the ground, armor locked tight.

"Navarrus!" Garrus rushed over to him. "What happened?"

"Virus hidden in the translation software," he said, voice muffled by his faceplate and not coming over the com. "Completely wiped my omnitool and locked my uniform. Was about a minute ago."

"A minute… spirits," Garrus muttered, dragging a hand across his faceplate. "They're long gone—and if we don't follow this case up, we'll lose the trail quickly." He helped Navarrus up as the armor began to reboot, the officer still stiff as servos began to whine. "We need to report this in and get more people on the case," he said grimly. "Call up the precinct, Navarrus—we've got slavers to hunt down."

-REDCOBRA-

"What do you mean we can't go after them?" Garrus said incredulously. "They've enslaved an entirely new species!"

"You shot at them," Captain Ramarr said impatiently. "Do you know how many rules that breaks? Let's try all of them. If we bring them in, we'll have to put you up on charges too, and I can't afford to lose my best investigator. Just let it go—we'll drop a few hints to the Council, maybe a Spectre or two, and let them take care of it.

"But that'll take too long!" Garrus exploded. "They'll be long gone by then—and just look at the state of the alien! It's a wreck—some Batarian groups called the Covenant and the Jackals invaded his world, and the Jackals apparently ate his family. Ate his family, captain! This scum needs to be brought to justice."

The captain leaned back and spread his hands. "There's nothing I can do—higher-ups have already decided. This isn't a matter for C-SEC anymore. Leave it to the Spectres; they'll handle it." The captain coughed. "And don't try to push it, Lieutenant; I've been told discreetly that your investigations will be… frowned upon."

Fists clenched, teeth gritted, Garrus forced out a "Yes, sir," and stalked out the door. Prowling down the hallways, which were suspiciously emptied the moment he turned down them, he slammed the door to his office open and fell into his chair with a snarl, massaging his forehead. "I can't believe this," he muttered. "Letting an entire species remain enslaved because of politics."

"Sir?" Navarrus peeked his head in from the hallway. "I take it your meeting with the Captain didn't go well?"

"No," he replied. "They're blocking the investigation because of the 'irregularities of the arrest' and the 'great impact of a new species in the galactic scene,' and turning it over to the Spectres whenever they find the spare time. Basically, they've stonewalled us and handed the investigation over to Spectres who are out on assignment already and might not be back for months."

"What," his subordinate said flatly. "That's the worst possible—"

"Just come in already," Garrus said. "You'll ruin your reputation even faster than me if you go around accusing the Council of making the wrong decisions." Navarrus obliged and entered, shutting the door, but not before Linarum had slipped in behind.

"We've been ordered to give our reports to the Captain, and then drop the entire thing," Garrus said grimly, "and to not mention it to anyone on penalty of dismissal. I have a sinking feeling someone is sweeping the whole thing under the rug until they can gain something from it." He sighed and leaned back. "So that's it."

Linarum protested, "That can't be right. Surely there's someone higher up we could convince—"

"Too late," Garrus said, eyes dull. "The captain already delivered the informal, unofficial state of affairs. I was informed any such attempts would not be met well." With a frown he continued, "It's wrong and it's stupid, but there's nothing we can do about it. We can't investigate, we can't make arrests, and we can't go higher up. We're out of options before we've even started."

There was a solemn silence, and Garrus turned on the security feed of the alien to pass the time. For a few minutes, he watched the thing slump in the corner of its temporary holding cell, mandibles set in anger.

"Well, there is one thing we could do," Linarum volunteered timidly, "but it's foolhardy and will probably get us killed."

Garrus cocked his head, motioning for him to continue.

"C-SEC isn't allowed to investigate… but what about concerned private citizens who saw the arrests go down?" Linarum said slowly, gaining confidence. "There's no rules against that, right?"

Navarrus retorted, "That would get us fired, for sure," but his voice lacked its usual conviction.

The three exchanged tentative looks. "What kind of savings do you two have?" Navarrus asked.

"I have a good deal stashed with First Citadel Bank," Linarum said, new life in his voice. "I'm not in danger of starving any time soon."

Garrus said, "I have quite a bit put away as well, plus I know a few people back in the Hierarchy that could probably be convinced to… donate to a good cause." A small smile began to spread on his face. "Money's no problem, I think."

Navarrus sighed. "We're going to get fired, I can already tell," he said resignedly, "but I can't just sit by and let this happen."

Garrus said, smile now fully on his face and a far-too-familiar fire in his eyes, "Why wait to be fired, if we're truly committed? I say we go out with a bang." He swiveled the security footage to face them. "If you get my drift."

-REDCOBRA-

_A/N: I feel like I got something about Garrus a hint off, so if anyone catches exactly what, could you tell me? I would much appreciate it- I can't quite put my finger on what exactly it is._


	9. Going Hot

"There it is," BRONCO muttered absent-mindedly, as he gazed up at his target.

It truly was an impressive building—well over 80 stories tall, it was the equal of any colonial structure outside the Inner Colony metropolises. It loomed far above him, and even the other skyscrapers around it were dwarfed by its bulk. Its foreboding black metal cladding and its shaded glass did nothing to dim the impression of a towering tyrant looking over his dominions. The flag at the top was a similarly massive affair, billowing slightly in the wind, though there wasn't so much as a breeze down below.

As he leaned nonchalantly against an alleyway wall, gazing up at the behemoth, he asked, "Victor, Anton—any idea where the servers are in that thing?"

"Bad news on that front, sir," Anton said gruffly. "We know the department, and we know what floors that department is on—it's right at the top. However, there are infrared plumes and exhausts consistent with more than one server farm on those floors."

"Best guess is 3-5 server farms, assuming they're of similar size to anything else we've gathered," Victor continued. "We may have some searching to do."

Anton cracked, "Just think about how much fun that would be if we weren't along for the ride, sir!" BRONCO smiled, fleetingly, but it was soon replaced by the usual frown of concentration.

"How to get to the server farms is the issue," he muttered. "I'm reasonably certain we can get in the building proper—it's a government facility, and it can't be closed-doors, at least in the lobby. But the government ministry… the server farms… that's another issue." He sighed. "I think this might take a few more hours of thinking." He readjusted his footing and settled into a more comfortable position, eyes staring past the flag as he began to bring up the precious few internal and external schematics he'd been given as a briefing.

They were very rudimentary, obviously censored—not of much use, besides confirming the basic layout. There were six floors he'd have to search, while keeping inconspicuous. The more he looked at the plans, the more impossible it seemed.

He sighed and brought a hand to his forehead, momentarily forgetting the layers of armor and light between it and his fingers. "This is going to take some serious planning," he said.

Suddenly, a siren blared just as Anton warned, "Sir! Police cruiser just lit up its sirens!" Before he could do more than jerk away from the wall, it slid defly into the alley opening, effectively closing that side. "Hands up and don't move!" a loudspeaker ordered, and BRONCO complied, swearing loudly behind inactive external speakers.

Two officers exited the car, their guns already pulled and aiming for him. "On the ground!" they yelled.

"I thought you said the hologram was working!" BRONCO accused as he sat.

"It is," Victor replied calmly. "Obviously we must have violated some law we had no knowledge of. There is no known way that this disguise could have been penetrated without the sensors detecting it."

"Known," BRONCO shot back. "That qualifier just fills me with reassurance!" Quickly, he continued, "Anton, what's the estimated strengths of those pistols?"

"Scaling from your weapon, they'll be a legitimate threat," Anton cautioned. "The hardlight shields are somewhat weaker than your normal shields, but they should take anywhere from 3-6 hits before failing. However, the first will certainly decalibrate the holographic system—your cover will be blown. I would recommend avoiding hits as if you had no shields in the first place."

"Noted," BRONCO said grimly, "but it's looking uncomfortably likely." He grimaced, teeth grinding. "In any case, whatever we decide to do, unobtrusive is no longer an option. Our face will be all over whether we go peacefully or have a shootout. This is going to be a hot data extraction."

"That is an unfortunately accurate summation," Victor said as one of the Batarian cops began to move towards them. "Slowly, throw the weapon here," it ordered.

BRONCO complied. "May I ask what I'm being charged with?" he asked with steely composure. "I'm sure this is all just a misunderstanding—"

"Shut your mouth, you lower-caste scum," the officer sneered. "Lurking around your betters with a gun on your back, eh? Think you're a brave little Leveler?" It spat. "Idiot."

"Leveler? I have no idea what you're talking about," BRONCO replied, genuinely surprised.

"Don't play dumb," the cop jeered. "You know the rules, and this time you won't be getting away with it." He holstered his weapon, pulling out a set of cuffs. "You'll be coming with us back to the station."

"Sir, that would not be an advisable choice," Victor said. "A police station almost certainly has the sensor equipment to invalidate our disguise measures."

"Noted," BRONCO grunted, as his hands were cuffed behind his back and he allowed himself to be hauled upright. "Working on it." As he was prodded towards the waiting cruiser, unlighted interior gaping open, his eyes darted back and forth. Just a few more seconds…

"Deactivate the safeties," he ordered, and then pulled out and forwards. The merely metal cufflinks couldn't compete with hidden servos and force-amplifying circuits, suddenly whining under a jump to full power, and the links shattered nearly instantly as he pivoted.

Both police officers had faltered momentarily at the sight of a seemingly-ordinary Batarian shattering handcuffs like they were glass, and the agent allowed no time for them to recover. Hands broke bones and tore ligaments with superhuman strength as the escorting officer was hurled over into the other, bodies falling limply in a tangle of damaged parts. Their pistols clattered to the floor, and BRONCO scooped one up on his sprint over to the struggling officers.

One (the one he hadn't thrown, he was mollified to see) managed to struggle to its knees, only to receive a kick which nearly caved its face in. That kind of attack was a killing blow, he knew, but it was also highly suspicious.

The other cop was moaning as he scrabbled at its destroyed arm. BRONCO cycled the pistol's mechanism once, then put two shots into the back of its head. Two more to the arm and one in the chest made his handiwork unrecognizable.

The other corpse only needed two to the head, and the splatter across the pavement nicely destroyed the incriminating evidence. Tossing the pistols away, he began to jog out the other end of the alleyway, offhandedly ripping the cuffs off each hand on the way and tossing them aside.

"Sir," Victor said, "You couldn't have seen it, but that kick made the systems flicker. We're down to 89% functionality, and self-repair is reporting errors."

"Well, that's not good, but it's a secondary concern," BRONCO replied. "The mission's changed: we have to go in hot, and we have to do it right now."

"Agreed," Anton said. "Shall I bring the projectors offline and activate combat shields?"

BRONCO considered it for a moment as he shoved through a crowd of concerned Batarians, remaining low and slow. By the time anyone had realize that he had come from the alleyway, he had melted away behind them. "Not yet," he decided. "My cover's not quite blown, and I'd prefer to avoid the Sampson option."

"Yes, sir. Shall I bring it to standby?"

"Yes."

His destination was just ahead, and already the guard outside had doubled, from four to eight—luckily, they were all still police officers, with only their pistols and lacking body armor. "Here we go," BRONCO muttered to himself, adrenaline pumping, as time seemed to slow. The crowd was giving him cover and concealment—now was the time.

He slipped the xeno weapon off his back.

_A/N: Sorry it's a bit short but I'm trying to both keep viewpoints separate to avoid confusion and updates a bit shorter and more frequent._


	10. The Building Storm

"Now, first order of business is making sure the xeno doesn't lose it when we break out," Garrus said, settling back into his chair. "From the looks of it, it's dangerously unstable, and if it makes a racket, there's no way we can get out."

Navarrus nodded. "True. If it's screaming and struggling, keeping under the radar is impossible."

Garrus sighed. "But I don't think we're gonna keep it quiet unless we tranq it or convince it we're on its side—which we are, but I'm not sure that it'll believe us, if our first indicator was any indication." He frowned again. "We can't tranq it either, without risking death, which is worse. Somehow, we have to convince it we're not these 'Jackals,' and that we're going to help."

Linarum chuckled. "So we get to convince a mad alien we're on its side?"

Garrus smiled back, the grim mood dissipating. "Somehow, yes. This is going to take a few days—lucky you two are on a bit of leave after that last assignment."

"Wait—what about you?" Linarum asked.

"I'm going to be taking an additional job in the precinct, as part of the unofficial punishment for doing my job," Garrus said, a tight, mocking smile on his face. "The captain was so kind as to let me choose which, so I decided to pick security. I'll be watching the cells to make sure none of the bums kill each other."

Linarum huffed. "I see how it is. You got the easy part of this—you don't have to go in the same room as that guy." He waved a talon good-naturedly. "But I guess it works. We needed someone on the cams anyway, and hey—it means you actually have to work the weekend!"

Garrus' smile disappeared faster than bar patrons when guns came out.

Navarrus snickered. "Maybe you didn't think this through quite as much as you thought?" he ribbed.

Garrus sighed. "Your shifts are over—get out of here. You've got work tomorrow."

The two officers exchanged high fives as they left, and Garrus slumped over his desk. "Eight hours both days on a weekend. Genius idea, Garrus. Absolutely brilliant."

-REEDCOBRA-

The trigger pressure on this gun wasn't what he was used to—but at these ranges, there was no need to carefully stroke it. No, all this needed was a satisfyingly hard pull. One officer went down. Move and pull. Two. Three.

Then the screaming and the running started as the other five officers went for their guns and the civilians scattered away from him. Another officer fell as BRONCO sidestepped behind a vacant stall, firing through the thin wood at the marked positions of the officers. This time, he missed a shot—but the others still came home, and a sixth officer folded.

That was when the return fire came. Inaccurate as it was, there was a copious amount of it for only two weapons.

As he stepped back out into the street to reacquire his targets, one whizzed past his helmet, nearly brushing the hardlight. An alarm whined, and Victor warned, "That near miss started disrupting the hologram. A few more, and we'll get flickering!" The agent dismissed the wail with a few blinks.

"Noted," BRONCO grunted, holding down the trigger and hosing the last two guards as they scrambled for cover. Neither made it, but his gun hissed in discontent and locked up, much to his consternation. "Malfunction?" he asked.

"No," Anton reassured. "This weapon appears to have a waste heat issue, much like Covenant weapons. Give it a few seconds to vent and it'll unlock and let you fire again."

BRONCO nodded, revising his strategy. The need for reloading was no longer an issue, but he couldn't lay down much suppressing fire. "What does the penetration look like?"

"Decent. Unarmored targets will be mission-killed with any shot not to an extremity, and unpowered body armor can't take multiple shots. Power armor, however, is another issue. Kinetic barriers are tough. Up close, you can shoot past them, but if firing from range you'll have to put a lot of shots on them," Anton noted. "I'd recommend not engaging with fully armored troops—I've already got a lot of encrypted comm traffic scrambling from the police precinct. Nothing from government or military yet, but expect at least a SWAT-equivalent squad within 15 minutes."

His response was to quicken his pace, slamming open the glass doors. Inside, a few secretaries cowered at the front desk, along with a few others in the lounge. "Nobody move!" he bellowed through his external speakers, as he jogged to the back hallway and to the stairs. "Staircase layout?"

"Essentially the same as human. The steps are marginally shorter, but it shouldn't be a problem, and the stairwell has the same layout."

Opening the door, he peered up and down, checking for any surprise visitors. There were none, and he stepped onto the landing. "Any response from building security?"

"They're still stunned, sir," Victor responded. "The guards on the secured floors are paralyzed trying to figure out what's going on. In addition, their armories are some distance away from their usual posts—if we move quickly, we'll face only light resistance. Unpowered body armor and sidearms, from the chatter I'm getting. There are lightweight KB's in the armory— not the same level as military, but they'll slow us down significantly if we can't blow past them before they're equipped."

Anton urged, "We'd best get moving. Once they get their act together—and that'll be any second—we'll only have a few minutes and we've got sixty flights of stairs to get up before that happens."

Sixty flights of stairs to go in two or three minutes.

He was glad he had powered armor.

-REDCOBRA-

Lord Hood looked over the latest report and frowned. The field had been narrowed yet again, and there were two potential candidates left—New Jerusalem, and Dabih III. He set it aside. It was going to be at least another day before reports were going to come in from there—there was no point going over it again and again. There was still other paperwork to get to, after all.

"Lord Hood?" an aide asked, popping up from his seat. "I've got a message for you."

"Priority?"

"Low, sir." The aide paused. "But… it's addressed to you personally. It's to Terrence Hood, not Fleet Admiral Hood or Lord Hood."

Hood's blood went cold.

"Oh, it's probably from my nephew," he said casually. "Is it addressed from Peyton Hood?"

"Yes, sir."

"And it's been run through the scanners?"

"Of course," the aide replied.

"Then hand it over— just some family business, that's all. Shouldn't take more than a minute."

"Ah, yes, sir." The aide shunted the message over to his personal terminal.

For a moment, he studied it, before moving it onto his secure server. Then, he returned to his work, signing papers and reading reports for a few minutes.

Then, he stood and stretched idly. "I think I'll move to my office," he said. "Lieutenant, just shunt anything more for me to there, will you?"

The aide nodded.

"Good man, Warren. How long have you been an aide again?"

"11 months, sir."

"Well, a promotion is in the works soon, I think," Hood winked. "How does Captain at the Sydney Quartermaster's office sound?"

The aide brightened. "I would like that very much, sir."

"Good, good—you'll be getting the notice within the week." Hood paused. "Just remember— my personal mail is not to be spoken of."

There was a pause, ripe with hidden meaning, and the lieutenant nodded slowly. "Crystal clear, Lord Hood."

"Well, I think that's all." Hood ambled over to the private elevator, scanned himself in, and waited till the elevator closed.

Only then did he allow the worry to crease his face as he gazed down on the message from "Peyton."

_Sir, _it read:

_Internal investigations indicate certainty of Insurrectionist penetration of the Diplomatic Corps at the entry-level. Investigations on higher officials are ongoing—however, probabilities of infiltration indicate a high chance of medium-level investigators._

_ Likelihood of exposure of level-SECRET data: HIGH (~81%)_

_ Likelihood of exposure of level-CLASSIFIED data: LOW, BUT PRESENT (~5%)_

_ Likelihood of exposure of level-EYES ONLY data: UNKNOWN, BUT NON-ZERO_

_ Several operations possibly compromised (list below). Recommend immediate reorganization of said operations._

Most of the possible compromised operations were anti-Insurrectionist ops and intel gathering, as expected, but two caught his eye.

_RED COBRA, _and _HUNNIC PEACE._

All he could do was swear.

"Ares, get me the Security Council. Now."

-REDCOBRA-

_A/N: There we go. Any guesses what HUNNIC PEACE refers to? Heh. Mweheh._

_Question: What do you want next chapter: Garrus or the Security Council? Or both?_


	11. Plots Made and Broken

_Saturday, August 29, 2561_

It was early in the morning cycle, a time at which no self-respecting off-duty cop should be awake after having completed a mission. Of course, he didn't get off-duty like he should. No, instead he was up at this time of morning watching cameras of drunks in the clink for the night, and to keep watching for another seven hours. To add injury to insult, he wouldn't be able to get off lunch either, meaning he'd be starving here in his office.

All in all, the situation was making it easy for Garrus to anticipate getting out of this place soon. Maybe not today. Maybe not this week. But soon he'd be free of the red tape and the snide political remarks, the backstabbing and the brown-nosing in a force too busy trying to move up the political ladder to actually protect the beings they were supposed to.

It sat there sullenly, still dressed in the ragged and dirty clothes it had worn when Garrus had found the thing. The updated file he'd pulled up next to the footage was similarly sparse and unchanged- the only addition was a medical staff finding that the creature was "presumably male."

Idly, he checked the other cameras and found the ones to the cell block clear. "Alright," he said to the air, taking a sip from his cup of ice water. "You're clear. Head on in."

"On it," Navarrus replied in his ear. Garrus watched his progression through the cams, seguing from one to another lazily.

The cell block door was closed, but unlocked, and the gate guard waved Navarus through with a smile, the two exchanging back pats as he passed. The cell door swung open as the turian put a hand on the palm sensor and his biometrics were recognized.

The alien bolted upright, huddled in one corner but face set in stone. "I suppose it's time?" he snarled.

"For what?" Navarus shoved the door closed, and sat down on the bench just inside.

"Don't play games," the alien barked, fists clenched. "Just kill me and get it over with."

"I'm not here to kill you," Navarrus said, taken back. "In fact, I came here with an offer."

"What? You want me to sell Earth out? Is that it?! I already told you, there is nothing you can do to me that would make me tell you- even if I knew where it was."

Linarum muttered over the line, "This guy's completely lost it," and Garrus couldn't help but agree.

Navarrus sighed. "No, that's not it." He rubbed his face with one talon, and through it he mumbled, "This is gonna be fun." He continued, "My name is Navarrus. I'm a police officer with the Citadel Security Forces, and you've been the victim of rogue slavers."

"Slavers?" The alien laughed. "Rogue? Like I'd believe that!"

"Ugh," Navarrus groaned. "You're going to be shuffled under a rug, soon. You'll probably rot in a cell for the rest of your life while the Council tries to decide what to do with you. I'm with a group who's not willing to let this slide."

"I'd rather rot than turn tail and become a _traitor," _was the sneered response. "Do your worst."

"Do we really need him, Garrus?" the turian asked. "Because I really don't want to have to deal with this for days on end."

"I know he'll be hard to work with," Garrus acknowledged, "but he's our only lead, you know that."

"I know, I know, I was just hoping," Navarrus grumbled. "Maybe you should listen before you reject my offer," he told the alien. "We want to track down the slavers who illegally traded you, and take their operation down."

"Oh? An internal affair messing up your precious Covenant?" The alien snorted.

"This isn't an internal dispute- it's a gang of criminal scum," Navarrus retorted. "They aren't affiliated in any way with the Citadel except that they pass through here. We're a trading station, and it's illegal to pass slaves through here."

The alien's brows furrowed. "Trading station?"

"The Citadel is the center of galactic government and thus government commerce," was the reply. "We don't take kindly to unaffiliated groups bringing illegal items through."

"Unaffiliated?"

"We are not being run by any criminal group, especially slavers and planet-killers," Navarrus said.

Garrus commented, "Not that what we have is far from it," and his subordinate had to work to kill a chuckle before it burst out.

"Let me be frank." Navarrus leaned forwards, eyes narrowing and voice lowering. "You come with me, and we'll hunt down the slavers that raped your planet, and we'll make sure they don't enslave anyone else, permanently." He patted his pistol for emphasis. "Or, you can stay here in your cell for the rest of your life."

The angry face of the alien slowly morphed into something more considering. "There'd better not be any Elites or Brutes."

"No, it's just three of us."

The alien frowned. "And I won't have to say anything about Earth?"

"Not a word."

"Then... you have a deal. On one condition," the alien said slowly.

"Name it."

"When we track down a slaver... they're mine."

"Deal," Navarrus said quickly, relieved to have gotten something so quickly and unexpectedly. "We'll get you out in a few days- we'll need to setup our getaway."

The alien smiled, a small, secret little thing. Slowly, it widened and spread, and as Navarrus stood, it continued to move into a horrendous rigor-mortis grimace. "I want to make sure you get a taste of your own medicine," the alien chortled, "and if you double-cross me, oh, the things I'll do to you double-crossing covie bastards! Flay your skin, break your bones, tear your muscles, dig your eyes right out of their sockets, pull your teeth... oh, yes, and we'll just be getting started! We're going to have a _real good _reckoning for the planets you've killed, won't we?" He cackled, and as it swelled to hysterical laughter, his newfound partner hurriedly shut the door behind him

Linarum coughed. "I'm... not excited about working with this lunatic, Garrus."

"I'm second-guessing myself, too," Garrus admitted. "But it's a bit late to go back, now."

He took another drink, and as he tilted his head back, his eye caught a flash of color from one of the monitors. Glancing at the offending screen, he coughed, spluttering and spattering water everywhere?

"Are those Council representatives?" He leaned closer in, studying the two, an asari and a salarian. They stood at the front desk, and as he watched the clerk handed them an e-form.

"That's a prisoner exchange form," he realized. "They're here for the alien already."

"Oh, come on!" Linarum complained. "Seriously?"

"Navarrus, change of plans," Garrus gritted out. "The council's lackeys are already here for our man. Looks like we're winging it right here, right now." He stood, pushing his chair out and adjusting his pistol. "Get the alien out of the cell and get him to the back entrance. We'll meet you there."

"Aw, what?" Navarrus groaned. "So now I get to play bodyguard _and _meatshield on the front lines, after having to talk to the crazy alien? I'd better be getting overtime pay for this."

"I'll pay you double," Garrus promised, "_After _we get out of here."

-REDCOBRA-

*RESUME*

_5: -'s why we've been having a bit of a snarl getting the newest thermal detectors into our security stations._

_4: Well, it's no one's fault, really- a freighter taking an engineering casaulty when the Slipspace drive vanishes one of its coolant pipes or similar happens on rare occasions, and it can't really be planned for. Glad to see you've handled it quickly._

_2: It's saved me a lot of trouble too, with how well you updated us on the situation- it kept a lot of planetary governors from complaining when they knew exactly what was happening and the progress of the repair effort._

_3: Well, now that that's resolved, I have one more matter to bring up before we end this week's session._

_1: Oh? I don't see anything else on the transcript..._

_3: It's not something that should be recorded._

_6: Oh. One of _those _matters. Get on with it, then._

_3: I've recently received reports from Internal Affairs. They've been running a covert investigation of certain diplomatic posts in the Outer Colonies-_

_2: You've been running _covert investigations _in _my posts _without even telling me!?_

_3: Please, please, [2]. Calm down. This investigation is an ongoing thing- it's been going on for decades. It never stops because the threat is ever changing. Regardless, they've reported that the "New Colonial Alliance" and other Insurrectionist factions have definitely gotten people back into the Diplomatic core as low-level personnel. Aides, secretaries, the like. Our background checks are rigorous, but obviously they aren't rigorous enough._

_2: You can't be serious. We _thoroughly_ vet our people in the process before they're even offered a job! I'm not sure how much more rigorous we could even get; the forms as they are invalidate half my applicants on the first page!_

_4: Another possibility: they could have been turned _after _they were hired. Remember those credit jacks on Tomas? We never did find those funds, despite our efforts, and we've all known that most of it went straight to Innie cells._

_2: …Point. _

_6: So you mean that ONI failed, once again, to track down a group of script-kiddie hackers breaking into our banks, and now, they're subverting our diplomats?_

_4: I assure you, [6], these are no "script-kiddies." This is a highly-professional team of dozens of hackers, with dumb AI support, all focusing on one AI at a time. Our AIs may be faster, but a mere Gen II smart AI couldn't handle that many intrusion methods at the same time without letting something through. Insurrectionists may be many things, but they aren't slackers in cyberwarfare._

_3: In any case, there's a chance certain operations may be compromised. Most of them, of course, are counterintelligence efforts on our part. However, there's two that are of concern._

_1:...And those are, [3]?_

_3: First, there's HUNNIC PEACE._

_2: HUNNIC... you can't be serious. If we don't lock that down, _now, _we may lose our only chance. We may see the advantages of it, but the average man on the street will only see us sucking up, and we'll have no choice but to move it back underground and break off negotiations._

_4: [2], I assume that means you're finally willing to let me assign a few teams to your area?_

_2: *sigh* It appears I don't have a choice except to let barbarians root them out. HUNNIC PEACE is far too important to let fall through at this point, and we can't let it go public until it's already done._

_3: ...Second, there's RED COBRA._

_5: Of all the possible operations... they managed to pick the two _worst _ones possible, didn't they?_

_2: This can't go on. We have to let one of these go public, to give us time to put the other one down, and you all know HUNNIC is more important and more immediate._

_4: We can't afford to let either of them go public. We'll have a full-blown revolt back on our hands!_

_2: Well, which is more important? The aliens far away, bottlenecked behind an artifact? Or the ones right on our borders, currently engaged in piracy, looting, and with which we _need _a settlement as soon as possible?_

_3: [2], those "far away aliens" are also a far stronger polity. From what we've discovered, their Relay system is... extensive, and their industry easily surpasses ours at the moment. We have few advantages but speed and surprise, and if we let it go public you _know _some corporate magnate or conspiracy theorist is going to go haring off after aliens to make history for themselves, and then everything we've done to give ourselves an edge will be wasted._

_2: Well, it's that or ruin the only chance we have for peace!_

_*ANONYMOUS VOTE DEMANDED*_

_SHOULD THIS COUNCIL APPROVE RELEASE OF INFORMATION RELATING TO: HUNNIC PEACE?_

_Y: 0_

_N: 6_

_SHOULD THIS COUNCIL APPROVE RELEASE OF INFORMATION RELATING TO: RED COBRA?_

_Y: 2_

_N: 4_

_*VOTE FINISHED*_

_NO INFORMATION WILL BE DISCLOSED ON EITHER OPERATION AT THIS TIME._

_2: Very well! If you want to hide in your castle of secrets, fine by me. But when it all comes crumbling down, _I _won't be the one taking the blame, mark my words!_

_1: I'm sorry, [2] but-_

_*2 HAS DISCONNECTED. SUSPENDING COUNCIL BUSINESS*_

_1:Well, I suppose this is over. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go soothe [2] before she breaks something._

_...And just to let you know, I voted against both proposals. I know they're not the most immediate threat, but these xenos... this 'Citadel'...right now, they outclass us just as badly as the Covenant ever did. I don't want to find out whether they're amenable to peace on their terms, or not._

_But [3], [4], if something does come out- I don't want an alpha strike, I don't want an assassination, I don't want a false-flag, I want none of the cloak-and-dagger business. We will deal with it _honestly, _and with this 'Citadel' honestly, in the hopes of peace. _Do I make myself **perfectly** clear?

_All: Clear, [1]._

_1: Good. _

_*1 HAS DISCONNECTED.*_

_*5 HAS DISCONNECTED.*_

_*6 HAS DISCONNECTED.*_

_3: *sigh*[4], I'll give you any asset you want. Just keep this quiet, for all our sakes._

_4: I'll do everything I can, [3]. Everything I can. Now, if you'll excuse me?_

_*HAS DISCONNECTED.*_

_3: God, I hope this Citadel isn't like the Covenant... I don't think we'll pull a miracle out of a hat this time._

_*PAUSE, 23.63 SECONDS IN DURATION*_

_Ares, I need you to redirect focus back on the simulations where we're discovered before we choose to reveal ourselves, and a war breaks out._

_...Focus on whether they'll conquer us, or just kill us all over again._

_*SESSION ENDED*_

_A/N: I'm terribly sorry, everyone. Things have been really hectic for me, and I've just squeezed out enough time to write now._

_Hopefully, the next update will be quite a bit quicker._


	12. Half of a Two-Part Plan

The long climb was over with in only 80 seconds, but the effort had translated through the straining servos and the artificial musculature of his suit, and despite all of the work the suit itself did, he was panting and nearing exhaustion by the time he reached the top. He couldn't do another sprint like that for long- the servos could keep him operating normally practically forever, but moving faster than that took its toll.

As he burst through the stairwell door, he hurled a grenade down the hall. It bounced once and then exploded right in front of two startled guards. The explosion shredded through their unpowered armor, and as he ran past he pumped a couple bullets into each as insurance.

The door he was seeking was on the right, and he lifted a foot and knocked the metal door off its seating. Tossing the door aside, he slipped into the room.

The room itself was low-ceilinged but huge, filled with stacks of computer servers and cooling equipment. The servers hummed, and though each individual hum was so soft it could be barely heard, the combined noise of hundreds of them was deafening.

BRONCO scanned the room, and quickly picked out a cluster of monitors and more conventional terminals in the corner. Grabbing the infiltration chip from his forearm's hidden pocket, he slapped it onto the front of one terminal over its data disk ports.

"Establishing connection," Victor informed him.

"Quick-response and SWAT teams are rolling out now," Anton added. "ETA 3 minutes, give or take a minute. There's half a dozen of the teams, too- nothing to try to fend off."

"Got it."

"Connection established, downloading files now. Time until completion 1 minute. The encryption looks tough, but I can worry about cracking it after we have everything."

The next few seconds were tense, as BRONCO could do nothing but wait and double-check his acquired weapon once more. He kept his eyes on the door, ready for anything to come through, but as Victor completed the download nothing did.

"Next server farm is across the hall; door's 20 meters down the hall," Anton said, and he moved there next, knocking down the door and repeating the same process.

Once again, nothing came through the open door, but just as Victor finished the second download, Anton warned, "Teams just came in the building. They're starting up the stairs now. You have about another 2-3 minutes before they're to this floor. Looks like over two dozen, and more are on the way already."

"How many more server farms?"

"Judging by the cooling equipment I can see, two. Likely a floor or two above," Anton replied.

"Got it."

"Be prepared for at least a couple xenos with barriers, the quickest likely have just enough time to get back from the armory."

In response, BRONCO dove through the door as he threw a second grenade. This time, shots went over his head, and as the grenade detonated, only one of the four in the hallway opposite him fell. The other three ducked behind makeshift barriers, and he cursed, crossing the space before they popped back up. They weren't expecting his speed, and he felled a second as they spun around, fingers clenching on their triggers.

Then it was his turn, and despite all of his training (and Anton's override of the servos taking advantage of the AI's processing capabilities to shift away from the bullet's path), two shots connected, one to the ribs and one on his upper arm. The hologram broke with a warning alarm, and more alarms warned that the weak infiltration hard-light systems were at their breaking point.

Luckily, the sudden shift of their enemy from a Batarian to an orange-clad armored figure startled his enemies just long enough for him to finish what the grenade had started.

"Hologram integrity is done for," Anton cried. "Significant damage to emitters, it'll be hours before I can give a convincing figure back."

"Switch to conventional shields," BRONCO ordered, and the wavering orange of the infiltration system fizzed and popped out, replaced by the familiar noise of recharging shield systems.

"Conventional shielding at 99% functionality," he reported.

This time, BRONCO didn't waste any time kicking the door down, instead just bulling through it. The screech of tortured metal heralded his arrival into an identical server farm to the previous two, and he slapped the infiltration chip onto the monitor, setting up behind one of the server towers and watching the door anxiously.

This time, as the download completed, he poked a head around the door to check if anyone else had arrived. His caution was warranted as a bullet sparked off the wall right in front of his head, and he jerked back and returned fire on the two Batarians that had arrived. This time, he was the one with cover, and they soon retreated back behind the stairwell door on the opposite end of the hall. He kept their heads down with periodic shots.

Then, he let his gun cool off, waiting for one of them to peek their heads around the door. When they did, he put a shot right on their head, knocking it back as their barriers took the shot. Then, he held the trigger, rushing down the hall as he did so. He reached the final door just as the gun overheated, and his shields flickered as shots impacted. They were down to halfway as he tumbled into the server farm, and this time he knew they'd likely be coming in after him.

He grabbed another grenade (it was good there were spares back at his cache, he was using a lot of them), and held the lever as he began the final download. At the sound of footsteps from the hall, he threw it through the doorway, and that bought him enough time to finish the final download.

"Done," Victor announced, a little bit of stress entering his voice. "Mission objective complete. Time to exfiltrate- though I'm not sure how you and Anton planned to do that, seeing as how we have active combatants coming up all the major stairways."

There was a moment of silence.

Then Batarians came through the door.

_A/N: I'm sure you all thought this was dead, and for a while so did I. The past months have not been kind, but I've finally managed to sort out some problems and Zootopia gave me inspiration for a different story, which jumpstarted my desires for writing in general, so this story has been resurrected. Sorry for the shortness, I wanted to get something out as quick as I could._


	13. Improvisation

_A/N: I finally made an update on time for the first time in 3 updates (and something like 15 months)! Hooray!_

_Here's some Garrus for you all._

_As Garrus gathered his gear, he watched with one eye the cameras as Navarrus hustled back into the cell he'd left only moments before. "Change of plans," the Turian said. "Some faction in the government has decided to sweep you, and what you represent, under the rug. They've moved fast- we need to get out of here and to ground before they can take you and hide you somewhere you'll never be found."_

_The alien stood. "So even your so-called 'trade station' is full of scum, too? Of course it was." It spat. "Whatever you're going to do, let's do it. I don't want to spend a second in your company I don't have to."_

_Garrus was spared from having to listen to anything further it might have said as he walked out the camera office and down the hallway, adjusting his gear as he went. "Linarum, where are you?" he asked._

_"__Getting out of my office now. What's our loadouts?"_

_"__The three of us all have sidearms and unpowered armor. I have a stun baton as well," Garrus said._

_Navarrus added, "I've got a taser and a set of police keycards, for all the good they'll do once we're out of here."_

_"__Wish we had more time, to get a full loadout from the armory," Garrus said grimly, "but we can't. I have enough funds we can all get some basic weapons and armor... probably. It won't be SWAT-level, or even good, but it'll project a KB."_

_"__Sounds good to me," Linarum said, sliding into position besides Garrus. "I don't want to try taking on a Batarian slave ring with office-duty police gear."_

_"__I don't know I want to give our new friend a rifle, but I think we should put together an armor set for him," Navarrus said. "We can't exactly leave him anywhere, and it's best if his irreplaceable head has some KBs between it and anybody taking potshots at all of us. An asari set- maybe with a turian breasplate- should do it, something basic."_

_"__Good idea," Garrus replied. "ETA 20 seconds, go ahead and get moving, Navarrus. We're stacking up on the rear door. Who's on guard there at the secondary post?"_

_"__Berrom, and..." Navarrus thought for a moment. "I don't know his name, the new kid, the one we got last week? Him."_

_"__That works out great. Navarrus, hit Berrom with the taser and blow right past him. The newbie won't know what hit him, and before he can move I'll place the baton right between his eyes." Garrus and Linarum hurried through the cell block door as Navarrus motioned the alien back and flattened himself next to the door._

_Garrus gave it five seconds, and as he neared the door called, "Now!"_

_Navarrus hit the open button and as it opened, he and Garrus rushed through, with Linarum stacked right behind him._

_The startled Berrom got out a "What?" before the taser hit him in the chest, and the aged veteran went down with a grunt._

_The newbie went down, still slack-jawed in shock, not a second later. None of the four paused or slowed a step._

_"__We have one more checkpoint three doors down, and then we're home-free to the garage," Garrus said. "Let's make this quick."_

_The alien trailed a few steps behind them, but kept pace as they waited impatiently for each door to open before rushing through to the next. The second checkpoint was manned by only one guard, and he didn't suspect a thing right up until Garrus buried the stun baton in his stomach and he folded silently._

_That was when the alarms went off. "Almost there!" Garrus urged._

_"__We have two minutes before there's a barricade at the entrance," Linarum reminded him. "This is going to be close."_

_"__If we have to blow our way through, we do it. But we're not downing anyone; if it comes to us and them with guns drawn, I'm not killing the guys we've worked with for years."_

_Navarrus pulled open the garage door, and ushered the other 3 after him. Just as he let the door go, a Turian- one he'd never seen before- came sprinting around the corner, holding a pistol that __definitely __wasn't in the police armory._

_"__We got someone on our tail!" he called, giving the door a shove with his foot as he put distance between it and him. "Huge guy, Turian, and he's got some stuff I've never seen before."_

_"__It's the Spectre," Garrus said. "They're always quick on the uptake, but this one's got legs, too. We should be fine, though- that door, and the car, is bulletproof for a few shots from anything short of a full-up anti-material mod, and no sidearm can hold that."_

_Grabbing the alien unceremoniously, he dumped him into the back seat of the car. "Navarrus, Linarum, one of you on each side," he ordered. "Keep him out of sight." Even as he spoke, he climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine._

_Linarum went around to the other side of the car, and Navarrus hopped in. Before he could close the door, shots rang out._

_He fell into the car, cursing loudly, and Garrus took that as his cue to pivot and take the patrol car dangerously fast around the exit turn, taking out the rear headlight against a pillar as he scraped along it._

_"__Close that door!" he told the three in the backseat as they hurtled out of the garage and into the sky. "Navarrus, are you hit?"_

_"__Yeah," the Turian said through gritted teeth. "Left leg. The garage door wasn't open- the Spectre just shot right through it and managed to nail me! I thought you said that was bulletproof!"_

_"__It is, you know that!"_

_"__Well, proof otherwise just went right through my calf, didn't it?!" Navarrus yelled back._

_"__No pistol on the market could shoot through that door," Garrus said firmly. "But it's a Spectre- I guess I should have thought that maybe he has something that __isn't __on the market yet." He glanced behind him for a split second, before swerving around a knot of traffic. "How bad is it?"_

_"__I don't think it's too bad," Navarrus said, voice low with pain. "Looks like it deflected and went through just muscle. I think between the door and my armor—" he sputtered for a second. "And the car door! It went through __that __too!"_

_Garrus turned in his seat. "It went through the car door, too?" He couldn't see the door itself, but the line of natural light, sparkling with dust, through the car left no doubt that it had. He stared at it in disbelief, before a honk yanked his head around and he was forced to pull up hard above an oncoming truck._

_Navarrus continued, "Whatever that gun is, it's a monster._

_But between the three, it didn't hit bone and didn't cause an expanded wound cavity; the exit wound looks about the same as the entrance. I can probably limp around if I have to. But I'm not going to be running anywhere for a while." He was silent for a moment. "If he'd gotten through that door before he shot, or if the door was a few centimeters further open, it might have taken my leg off."_

_"__How's the bleeding?"_

_"__Well, that's not doing quite as good as the wound itself. I'm bleeding pretty good- Linarum, hand me a bandage, would you?" With a few grunts, he wound the bandage around his leg and ripped it off, adhering it with the provided patch. "That was some really good shooting. Any idea who that was?  
Linarum shook his head. "No idea- he's not one of the more famous Spectres."_

_"__Regardless, let's not meet that particular Turian again, please?" Navarrus said. "I get the feeling that if there's not three layers of metal between me and him, our next encounter will be worse."_

_"__I don't plan on going anywhere near Spectres, rest assured," Garrus said, diving underneath another crowd of vehicles and deep into the streets proper._

_"__Given that we just waltzed away with the only known member of a new alien species, we might not be able to avoid it," Linarum muttered._

_Garrus couldn't refute that, and the rest of the drive passed in silence._


	14. Imbalance

_A/N: Hello all, monthly update time. It's a bit later than usual as I had to move houses and lost a week of writing time in the process. Also, the first half or so is just me waxing pseudo-scientific about the factions, feel free to skip it if you're not into infodumps._

_Enjoy!_

_Admiral Hood sighed as he sat, sore from a day of ceremonies celebrating the launching of another new ship. They were common nowadays, a good sign- but very tiring for the man in charge of the celebrations!_

_"__Alright, Ares," he groaned. "You told me the Assembly had finished simulating our cases, yes?"_

_"__That is correct, sir," Ares replied calmly. "Would you like to hear our conclusions?"_

_"__Go ahead."_

_"__As you know, we have simulated 6 different general cases- three in which hostilities are not immediately joined, and three in which hostilities immediately break out. I shall begin with our two most optimistic conclusions._

_"__In the case that peaceful first contact can be made and maintained, there is a high probability of a significant economic boost from trade and technology transfer- their technology groundings seem to have diverged significantly from ours, and offer downsides and advantages we don't have, and vice versa. Due to our apparent much smaller size, the benefits this would confer are considerable to say the least. With several races or organizations competing for technological insights, we can instigate a bidding war quite easily and profit enough to get much of the civilian-grade material they already possess for a very low price. Our military monopoly makes that somewhat harder for the other side, and in addition HITCHHIKER has seen no indication of anything past advanced dumb AI in any of the civilian networks that have been infiltrated. We can't rule out their usage in government or military installations, but the limited scope of such activities suggests their AI, if any, is either very new or a stagnant field of research, and the Assembly is confident we hold a significant computing advantage as long as a Smart AI is on-scene. Our Dumb AI's are slightly more powerful on a brute-force basis—we simply use more processors per AI, analysis has concluded, perhaps because theirs tend to be a bevy of specialized programs where ours are designed to be more general-but don't seem to utilize processing capability as efficiently as theirs, meaning that integration of their programming language may improve our own capabilities even further. This offers even more opportunities for profit._

_"__However, there are political considerations in this scenario. Precisely due to our depleted state and relative size, there __is __a risk that cultural assimilation could occur in as little as one or two centuries, after which point we would cease to be an independent polity and become another member race of this conglomeration. This is a matter that the political leadership must decide on, obviously. The advantages or disadvantages of assimilation or independence are, to put bluntly, too complicated and based on too many variables for the Assembly to effectively simulate at a point this far from the actual event._

_"__Our second scenario assumes peaceful first contact is made for 5-10 years, and then breaks into hostilities with one faction or member race of the Citadel but not the organization as a whole. This is possible due to the loose-knit nature of the Citadel's power structure._

_"__In this case, between the significant economic boost even 5 years of trade would give, and the technology transfers and industrial espionage we've estimated, our fleet would be largely rebuilt on this cycle's building schedule, with the next generation of ships implementing what we've already gathered and will gather in this year and next in the slips, and the generation of ships past __that __in the design and testing phase. This would obviously be pushed forward another generation if 10 years is the closer estimate._

_"__However, since our schedule is assuming years of clandestine espionage before contact, it means their first or second generation will still be in the slips compared to our second and third, and our economy is frankly built around the military-industrial complex. We're accustomed to a level of military spending as a percentage of budget and total economic potential that these polities would find ruinous. Even with their greater size, that means we can put out nearly as many ships as them until they go to a full war footing themselves._

_"__Given these parameters, we have estimated the likelihood of a stalemate as higher than 60% with any of the factions we've yet been able to identify. This probability is lowest with the most major faction we've found data on- the Turians, and approaches 100% with the minor races. However, the probability of the UEG managing a victory are fairly small. In essence, the war would be nothing more than ships lost on both sides, with very little gained, unless something major has been missed in our calculations. This would likely lead to a negotiated settlement, and while our economy would still take a hit, we will still be in good shape. There is a risk of seguing into the third scenario, however._

_"__The third scenario assumes general hostilities after 5-10 years. In this case, unfortunately, we are likely to be forced to an unfavorable negotiated peace. With aggressive population expansion measures and the postwar boom, we've managed to recover as a population to about 14 billion individuals, and though our birthrate is currently high, it's unlikely to pass 20 billion in this time frame, and most of the new births will be far too young to fight in this hypothetical. The Citadel as an organization, we have estimated, likely has a population somewhere between 45 and 75 times that figure, with an only slightly poorer relative GDP per capita, giving them somewhere between 43 and 71 times our effective GDP."_

_Hood sucked in a breath. "I can't say I wasn't expecting it, but those are terrible odds," he said._

_"__For reference, sir," Ares replied, "the relative disparity in GDP between the United States and Japan in the Second World War was between 5 and 10 times. The relative disparity in GDP between the UN coalition and the Koslovic and Frieden fractions in the Interplanetary Wars varied between 10 and 30 times."_

_The admiral winced. "So we'd be crushed like an ant."_

_"__Yes and no. We would be able to repel the initial fleet composition of the Citadel, simulation indicates, with the loss of only a few systems, mainly those where the Relays themselves are situated. The chokepoint those represent to enemy ships- especially in this time frame, since even civilian Slipspace tech will have only just been implemented on their new-build ships- mean that while superior numbers could ram a sufficiently-sized fleet down our throats, we could make them pay heavily with dedicated defensive fortifications. Should they wish to negotiate then, we would likely be able to get off with a simple loss of most of the economic gains from the previous years- essentially leaving us off where we'd be if we had never discovered them in the first place for that decade, as well as reduced economic opportunities compared to the first two cases._

_"__Should they hit us with the new-build ships out of anger, though, we would be out of reserves to repel them."_

_"__And then we'd get another fleet sitting above earth, only this time they're dictating terms."_

_"__Correct." Ares' figure wavered on the desk. "There is one __very important __consideration the Assembly feels must be conveyed to you and the other directing members of any military efforts in any of these cases, however."_

_"__Which is?"_

_"__'Special Asset Denial' must not be considered under any circumstance," Ares said flatly. "HITCHHIKER has recently unearthed what appears to be a set of treaties that bans usage of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons on habitable planets, as well as strategic kinetic impactors. These seem to be be guided with a philosophy that the world's habitability itself is more important than the military value of a strike, probably because the Citadel lacks comprehensive terraforming technology._

_"__What this means is that if a system has a terraformed or terrestrial planet, NOVAs are off the table. Planetary SMAC strikes are off the table. Chemical stocks are likewise unfeasible. Biologicals, provided they can be sufficiently disguised and long-term in effect, are possible, but likely to generate significant backlash regardless of our deniability. In effect, anything with more effect than a tactical-grade nuclear device cannot be risked. This is a fundamental change to our warmaking philosophy, given how scorched-earth we have been forced to be in these past 40 years._

_"__We may use nuclear or antimatter weapons in ship-to-ship battles, but the backlash will also be a factor. The Assembly, however, sees no way to work around this tactical necessity without badly damaging our own combat effectiveness, and has accepted this as required._

_"__However, if we were to violate the planetary terms, __even if we are not a signatory, __we would almost certainly lose __any __possibility of a negotiated, conditional peace treaty." Ares' digital eyes stared straight into Hood's. "This is a direct recommendation from the Assembly as a whole. We will likewise be making this clear at the next scheduled meeting."_

_"__You don't have to tell me that," Hood said grimly. "But getting that through to ONI might well be impossible. At this point, they consider wiping a lost cause to deny it to the enemy a routine operation." A wry smile graced his face. "How many nukes have they used over the years? Hundreds, maybe even thousands."_

_"__Correct." Ares nodded._

_"__Now, onto the other three cases, I can simplify these considerably. In the event of an immediate limited war, the situation mirrors that of our second scenario, with the mitigating element of surprise and mobility on our side somewhat offsetting our lack of assets, though our chances of stalemate or victory are slightly worse against every faction._

_"__The other two scenarios play out like our third. Either an unfavorable negotiated settlement, or unconditional surrender, with almost 100% certainty._

_"__Should war break out under any of these scenarios, the Assembly recommends the highest possible emphasis be put on a diplomatic solution, even if it means accepting significant losses in prestige or buying power. If we try to fight, we can hold our own for the first one to three years. After that, nothing we do can stop us from being ground down._

_"__Admiral, I'm sure you understand this, but the Assembly wants you to drill it into every officer in the fleet and with the entire Council. If we fight, humanity __loses.__"_

_-REDCOBRA-_

_"__I feel like we're doing pretty good for being trapped in a server farm 60 floors above the ground," BRONCO commented idly, as shots slammed into the computer towers he crouched behind. "I'd even say we're winning, given the pile of dead bodies at the door."_

_"__While you and Anton have done an admirable job taking down xenos," Victor replied, "We're still trapped. Holding out doesn't count as a victory in my book."_

_"__True enough." A shot broke through a hard drive already shattered by previous shots and spanged off his shoulder shields in a burst of light. His return fire drove the trio peeking through the door back out, but at the cost of his weapon overheating once again. "Infinite ammo is definitely a plus,but not being able to fire as quickly as I can reload a magazine is annoying."_

_A grenade made its way through the door, and burst in a flash of bright light and a loud boom. The helmet compensated quickly, but he was still blinking furiously as he fired through the door to discourage anyone from trying to come in if they thought that little ploy had worked. "Still, we're only facing fast response police teams at the moment. I have a feeling that once the actual military gets here, they won't be quite so timid, and then we'll be in for it." He paused. "ETA on them, Victor?"_

_"__Two minutes, they're in the stairwells and elevators now."_

_"__Well, I guess it's time to go."_

_"__Where, exactly, are we planning on going?" Victor asked dryly._

_"__Well, I've got an idea on that. How much impulse can my jump jets and evasive thrusters give me if we run them dry?"_

_Victor sighed. "Ah. The answer is, nearly enough, but not quite."_

_BRONCO snatched the last grenade off his belt and lofted it into the doorway. "Meaning?"_

_"__Theoretically, given current levels, you would be able to land safely. The margin of error, however, is slim, to put it very generously, assuming you want to land anywhere other than right below us right into the teeth of the xeno quick response command center. In fact, just taking into account the need for you to go out of your most drag-inducing pose to land on your feet shaves that margin away entirely." The grenade detonated, buying him another few seconds._

_"__You'll probably live if we land in the right place. You might not be walking away from it."_

_BRONCO grimaced. "I'd hoped for a little more than that, but it can't be helped." He rolled his head back. "I always wanted to be a jump trooper as a kid, you know that?"_

_Peeking back out around the server farm, he let out one last long burst, another few rounds bouncing off his shields, before leaping forwards and out towards the windows. He grabbed his pistol and emptied the magazine at the window, spiderwebbing the bulletproof glass with cracks, and hurled himself through, shields bursting in protest from the force._

_For a moment, he seemed suspended high above the alien city, looking down on the xenos below. It was surprisingly peaceful for the events that had led to him throwing himself out a building hundreds of feet up._

_It was abruptly ended as a sharp impact sent him spinning, one arm suddenly flapping limply in the air as he began to fall. He'd been hit in the shoulder, a lucky shot going under the armor plating and through his bodysuit. The suit displays showed well enough that his scapula was fractured badly and the muscles were torn._

_That would be bad enough, but his free fall was forcing his suddenly-limp arm to move quite vigorously. That amplified the pain ten-fold, and he already felt his vision greying._

_"__Don't think I'm staying conscious," he gasped. "Take care of me while I'm out."_

_Finally, the automed functions kicked in, and he sunk under a wave of analgesics and sedatives._


	15. Going to Ground

_He came to slowly, hazily. Though someone had silenced the alarms, their blinking warnings were so numerous and bright that they shone through his eyelids. The fog in his mind told him he was on the automed, but he couldn't quite remember why._

_ Tentatively, he opened his eyes and ran them over the readouts. Broken shoulder, puncture wound, muscle tears. Right, he'd been shot. The readouts also showed he had cracked two ribs and broken an ankle, in addition to large-scale bruising._

_ That must have been from the landing._

_ Suddenly, he noticed he was moving, buildings moving past slowly. "Anton?" the operative murmured. "Sitrep?"_

_ "We're about 5 km from the tower," Anton said. "No pursuit we can see. Currently we're moving through the back alleys to get some more distance. Unfortunately, the automed is running at far higher levels than it can naturally replenish."_

_ BRONCO blinked, trying to clear his head to no avail. "I'm in pretty bad shape, aren't I?"_

_ "For someone who needs to be moving and evading pursuit, yes. Unless we tone down the drugs you're getting, we'll be out within a day. If we do turn it down, however, it's going to hurt. Mostly because you have to keep full analgesics on your damaged foot, or else we won't be getting away anywhere. We can take a slower pace to let it heal after we get out of the city, but the escape itself is causing you further unavoidable damage. That means the rest of your body will just have to feel the damage."_

_ "Currently, I'm running the suit on override mode, with Victor monitoring the situation. Don't try to move, sir. My calculations will put the least amount of stress on you possible; anything you try will be less efficient."_

_ Victor added, "Not to mention you're currently on enough analgesics for an open-heart surgery. Your judgment is undoubtedly impaired."_

_ BRONCO nodded, grunting in agreement. "...Feeling pretty foggy at the moment."_

_ He closed his eyes. "Tell me if you need me for anything."_

_ "Sir."_

_ Slowly, he let himself drift away again. He had a feeling this was going to be the closest thing to sleep he'd be getting for some time._

_ "It's set," Garrus said with a sigh, slumping into the couch. It was one of only 4 pieces of furniture in the room- a table, a couch, and two armchairs. They weren't particularly comfortable, either._

_ "We've got a discreet ride off-Citadel towards Batarian space. It won't get us all the way there, and it's hardly a luxury cruise, but it will get us there for a price I could afford. We'll book something else once we're out of here and we're harder to spot."_

_ "About time," Navarrus grumbled. "Being the one with a limp makes me the most conspicuous, and wanted posters and ads are plastered over every billboard and info VI in the wards. Every time I go out for anything it feels like a hundred people are watching me."_

_ "You'll have to do it one more time," Garrus replied. "We'll have to go on foot through the spaceport to get to our ship. No Customs- I've paid enough credits for that- but basic security will still be there, and I'm sure the Council has a few people looking around for our guest._

_ "Speaking of, is he still in the room?"_

_ "Yep," Navarrus said. "Hasn't left in the time you were gone."_

_ "What is he doing in there?"_

_ "No idea." The Turian shrugged. "And I don't think I want to know, really. It's probably just him muttering to himself and scribbling more stuff on the walls."_

_ Garrus grimaced. The first time they'd checked on the alien, he'd scrawled messages in his own language all over the wall. The matrix he'd extorted from the slavers only had spoken translations, not written ones, and the sloppy nature of the writing made him doubt they were particularly intelligible._

_ Not to mention some of them were red, when the house didn't have any red ink._

_A/N: Sorry about the short update this month, I've been busy with an internship, and I promised I would get at least something out roughly every month. In any case, next month should have a longer update now that I'm on top of all my work._


End file.
